David Knotts - The Long Way Home (2009)

I – Allegro
II – Large, Tenderly

The long way home was written during the summer which seemed more full of rain than sunshine. I remember standing looking out of my garden in a torrential downpour, the trees hanging wet and heavy. This scene inspired the opening of the trio, the repeated figures in the piano providing a rain-like accompaniment to the string melody. This contrasts with a delicate and highly-ornamented music which brings to mind the fiddle tunes of Eastern Europe.

The second movement is a meditation on Sylvia Townsend Warner's poem, Go the long way, the long way home, in which she encourages the reader to look heedfully at a rural scene on Midsummer day; the drilled loam, the spice pinks, the tall been rows. For me, no other writer catches so touchingly the poignancy of time passing:

Look closely, look well,
See how your garden grows,
Ponder yourself even into the secret cell
Of this year’s honeycomb:
Look long, for long has this been yours and the long been dear,
And this is the last time you will stand here.

The players disappear into thin air, as Townsend Warner suggests, like a dandelion clock jolted by the midsummer breeze.

The piece was commissioned by the Lawson Trio and is dedicated Krystyna Budzynska.