Francine Trester ‘Many Miles Away… Five Quotations from Sir Walter Scott’

In common with many of her works, Francine Trester’s piece for the Scottish Clarinet Quartet found its inspiration in poetry, in this case the writings of Sir Walter Scott. Each of its five movements is prefixed by an epigraph.

1. Prologue “Many miles away there’s a shadow on the door of a cottage on the Shore of a dark Scottish lake.”
2. Frozen “We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt.”
3. Nocturne “To all, to each, a fair good night, And pleasing dreams, and slumbers light.”
4. Enigma “Cats are mysterious kind of folk – there is more passing in their minds than we are aware of.”
5. Edinburgh “And all the steep slope down, Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky, Piled deep and massy, close and high, Mine own romantic town.”

This work received its premiere at the International Clarinet Association’s ClarinetFest, Assisi, 2013, in a concert reviewed here.