During a Lifetime stands as a portrait of Toronto-born, Berlin-based composer Chiyoko Szlavnics, commissioning three major pieces: “During a Lifetime” (2015), “Freehand Poitras” (2008), and “Reservoir” (2006). Szlavnics’s music is marked by tender asceticism and an immersive approach to process - her scores privilege long sustained notes, slow pitch glissandi, and luminous combinations of sinewaves with wind and string ensembles.
The title piece features Konus Quartett (four saxophones) entwined with sinewaves. Recorded in Hamburg, it sets out as a field of suspended, overlapping lines; the saxophones breathe in and out, their attacks softened by electronic tones that drift in glissandi. Listeners are drawn into a hypnotic landscape where the boundaries between timbral worlds are gently dissolved - color and shape emerge through the slow movement of tones rather than through rhythmic events or melody.
“Freehand Poitras” offers clarinet, cello, and sinewaves, while “Reservoir” expands the ensemble to an octet (Apartment House) engaged in cycles of long tones and fluctuating sine frequencies. With each work, Szlavnics weaves fragile ensembles, crafting relationships between mass, air, and silence. Her approach balances rigorous conception with poetic execution - drawing visual inspiration from graphic scores, her pieces unfold in time like gradients or soft lines in space. The music focuses not on dramatic gesture, but on the quiet drama of attention, memory, and small change.
Apartment House and Konus Quartett’s deeply attentive performances lend quiet intensity and luminous focus to the album. The result is music that asks for patience but rewards immersion, its subtle movement and luminous ambiguity echoing long after the sound fades. During a Lifetimeaffirms Szlavnics as a singular voice in contemporary composition - her works revealing new spaces for chamber music to breathe, drift, and radiate gentle light.
