[1][2] Begin Afresh has a duration of about 17 minutes and is cast in three movements: In the score program note, Weir described the piece as "a kind of diary, an almost continuous survey of musical reflections about the trees and plants I observed, in a very urban setting, over the period of a year."
During the course of its completion, Weir had also taken two breaks from composing and thus named the movements after each month she started or restarted work on the piece.
It ripples sinuously in the spring, with almost a concertante role for lead violin Igor Yuzefovich, pulses mysteriously in the autumn, and is full of mostly quiet activity even in midwinter."
He added, "Begin Afresh, a title drawn from Philip Larkin, is delicately scored and its ideas are always evolving in a recognisably traditional way.
It even gets a bit Tolkienesque at times, with piano and brass conjuring passages that sounded distinctly like music for ents.