Only the best kinds of music can induce that rare feeling of serenity that is so lacking in a student’s everyday life.
Sometimes, with all the stress of exams, reports and essays, it takes a quiet room and a piano to make even the most hectic situation suddenly calm and content.
Luckily, Fresno City College is supporting multiple piano recitals in April and May. The first of six performances was on April 4, when Michael Delfin, a member of the Young Artist Guild of the Music Teachers’ Association, played an elegant recital. If music soothes the savage beast, then the piano is what stops a stampede. The works Delfin selected, with the piano at his fingertips, could bring a resounding harmony to an entire forest.
As Delfin elegantly brought one of Schubert’s sonatas to life, one can close his eyes and find something that’s so very lacking in a student’s life: solace. A composer himself, Delfin played some of his own songs: an excerpt from his work “The Journey” that listeners cannot help but travel through themselves as the music carries them along.
“We’re all very proud of Michael and everything he’s accomplished,” said Carol Oaks, who has been Delfin’s piano instructor for the past nine years.
Something about Liszt’s Harmonies du Soir catches the audience, a crowd that after hearing this performance will surely make time for the recital on April 17 as well. There’s a beautiful, moving, personal quality to piano music that, like all the best art, allows the audience to see something glorious of their world that they hadn’t noticed before, or had forgotten. After listening to all the same songs lately for so long, one can easily forget the anticipation of the closure that a peaceful new song brings, and the feeling of calm that comes with it.
It is the infrequency of this feeling that adds to its somber, peaceful allure. With all the stress a student handles this late in the semester, it is quite pleasant to be able to close one’s eyes to the world and open the mind to music.
The next performance, a duet by Olga Quercia and Matt Horton, is Friday, April 17 at 7:30 PM in the FCC Recital Hall. Admission is free to all attendants. It is the second of six events happening in April and May at the Recital Hall. The performances culminate in the FCC Piano Department recital entitled, “I Love A Piano.”
While a guitar can make a heart beat faster, and the drums will make a person start to move, the piano will always be able to put the world at peace, if only for a short time. It is infinitely better at bringing harmony to a chaotic world than other instruments will ever be.
