Every emotion imaginable suffused the room at Palomar’s Concert Hour on Thursday, where a performance on violin by Alyze Dreiling, Music Director and Conductor of the New City Sinfonia, rendered with marvel-inducing skill offered attendees a riveting vicarious experience that was as intense as it was amazing.
The music transcended what would otherwise be the joy-killing limitation of its theme — the crucible of suffering that comes from enduring the weight of societal oppression. Five pieces of music were played, some chosen as a reflection of Black History Month, with wide variations in tone that would encompass the richness and perseverance of Black composers.
Despite the hindrance that a subject such as this would normally impose on the concert’s featured performing artist, she performed with such aplomb that the chance of anyone in attendance not experiencing catharsis would be a virtual impossibility.
Sojourning through the interior realm, the journey began with the first piece, “Fantasy No. 2” by Florence Price, a soothing strain tinged with a tincture of the melancholy. The drear deepened with the familiar chant that followed, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” which led to the lament, “I’m troubled in mind” both by Clarence Cameron White. Bereft of hope with a mind riven by perplexity, disenchantment compounded by disorientation reaches a crescendo at the end of this piece, leaving the audience in hushed silence.
Now that the stage was set, the woeful nadir of it all was soon revealed at the heart of the set itself — a piece entitled “Hum” played on viola. It was the most resoundingly dissonant piece of the performance, as over and over again Dreiling dragged the bow cryptically across the viola strings. However with the instrument, by which she as sorceress admitted loud screaming banshees into the chambers, there emerged a light of hope at the end of the piece.
The fourth selection, “Somber Prince and the Memories of his Childhood” by Sakari Dixon Vanderveer, carried hope’s inspiration into a resurgence of ardor with brief bursts of heartfelt joy leaping at newfound promises of liberation. However, the swell of excitement deflated each time with the recognition that breaking free from this bane of inexorable oppression was all but futile.
The final piece, “Fantasy No. 1” by Florence Price, was a glimpse at a dazzling array of unbridled passion amplified to such an astounding degree that it pushed giddy disorientation onto the verge of derangement. Fearing the prospect of never getting out from under immense hierarchical class domination, desperation drives despair to hysterics.
In the end the implicit persona of the set seemed to fragment into split personalities, each bootlessly attempting to extricate their host from the ever-present oppression that proved ineluctable. Ultimately, the emotional maelstrom of the piece gives way to the salutary epiphany that liberation from the recrudescent angst of oppression will not be attainable in this earthly existence, however intense and well-intended the aspiration might be.
Concert Hour is a delightful series of events offering music enrichment to the students of Palomar. As presented by the Palomar College Performing Arts Department, each concert offers a unique experience by bringing together the community for an enhanced musical experience. Doors open at 12:50, with seating on a first-come first-served basis. The program begins at 1 p.m. and ends at 2 p.m.
