New Haven Independent
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Zosha Di Castri
Morse Recital Hall
New Haven
Feb. 5, 2026
Under Johnson Li’s deft fingers, the Steinway at Morse Recital Hall came vividly alive on Thursday night.
Li, a student at Yale School of Music, performed renowned composer Zosha Di Castri’s “Untellable Hour of Quiet” during the first show of the spring semester. In addition to featuring guest composer Di Castri, the show highlighted the work of several highly talented student composers.
“Untellable Hour of Quiet” was written in response to the smoke of Canada’s wildfires that spread across North America (apparently, even Europe) in 2023 and cast an eerie yellow haze in places like New York, where Di Castri is based, and our very own New Haven.
Her composition also functions as a conceptual response to early twentieth century composer Maurice Revel’s “Oiseaux tristes,” which translates to “sad birds.” Revel’s piece imagines a solitary bird whistling a melancholy tune before other birds join in. In Di Castri’s answer to Revel’s piece, humans are those sad birds, not trapped in a suffocating forest but stuck in the purgatory of an otherworld.
At the opening of “Untellable Hour of Quiet,” achingly slow resounding notes hardened into a brittle pitch. A high key sounded repeatedly like a warning bell. Then a bright glissando came abruptly, interrupting the stillness of the piece.
Graceful chords rolled over one another, only to be disrupted by thunderous notes. Then came the bright notes of warning again followed by jagged, atonal chords. Li attacked the keyboard so forcefully the keys seemed on the verge of splintering. Then the song quieted it as if it was coming to a close. Quiet not as calm, but as something charged, ominous, and unresolved.
The audience sat with those lingering notes, wondering what would come next. It felt as if any sound risked breaking a spell, or exposing what the quiet was trying to hide.
Li then plunged back into the opening motif, the atmosphere once again nightmarish. Sharp, glassy attacks pierced stretches of near silence. Notes arrived like isolated thoughts, then dissipated.
As the song came to a close, shimmering chords led to a delicate riff that evoked the fragile loveliness of a butterfly’s fluttering wings.
“Untellable Hour of Quiet” draws its title from poet Frank O’Hara’s “Maurice Revel”:
…If, at the untellable hour of quiet,
he had not put fingernail to
waterglass, what trees we’d’ve
turned to! fugitive, quivering.
That “quivering” unease permeates Di Castri’s composition. The piece invokes the spookiness of climate change, anxiety about the future, and a spiritual longing for nature, all filtered through an introspective sonic language.
Harmonies hovered and dissolved at the piano’s edges, asking the audience to listen closely to the subtleties of timbre and silence – to dwell with uncertainty rather than resolve it. Yet that final hopeful note hinted quietly at a brighter future.
Di Castri’s “String Quartet No. 1,” also played by Yale students, closed the show.
The violins, viola and cello launched with raw, expressive power. The burst of tension led to discordant, squealing notes that threw the audience into a maelstrom of shifting timbral collisions. There was no familiar harmonic ground to stand on.
Violins took off with a screech as the song revved up. Pizzicato and arco notes danced with one another, as the violist’s bowing turned increasingly chaotic.
There were episodes of near frenzy – string lines tearing forward with breathless momentum – and sudden instants of stillness, where a gauze of harmony or a muted, lyrical fragment seemed to breathe against the surrounding storm. From one moment to the next, Di Castri shapes an internal tension between virtuosic display and introspective quiet, between collision and repose.
Performing with committed precision, the quartet’s bodies swayed with the swoops of their sharp notes, heads shaking from the force of their sound. Bows moved up and down, right and left as they played at breakneck speed. The violist played so swiftly it appeared he would propel himself from his chair. Then the players suddenly snapped tightly together, though their strings still spoke to, and against, each other in unexpected ways.
The audience was forced into utter stillness to hear the next whisper of notes as the piece appeared to ease into a gentle ritardando. Clashing pitches then reemerged, the piece toggling between acceleration and deceleration – until, in a blink, it was over.
The experience felt wholly cinematic. If this was indeed a movie, the audience surely got into some hijinks.
Reflecting on her time as a guest composer, Di Castri said, “I was thoroughly impressed by the caliber of the musicians at Yale and the performances they gave of my work. It brings me great joy to see the openness and earnestness with which they approached their interpretations. Johnson Li’s performance stood out for his impeccable control of the soft dynamics and unique ability to create an organic flow between the musical ideas – something not every pianist understands or achieves. The string quartet gave a very lively performance and handled the many quick changes between extended techniques with confidence and musicality. It’s terrific to see young musicians working so comfortably and with such commitment to the music of our time.”
For more of the Canadian composer, sound artist, and pianist, visit Di Castri’s website at zoshadicastri.com.
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