by the Melos Chorus
Portrait of a pianist who saw the clandestine night begin, and who now finds it again in the biggest hall of the Parco della Musica.
On 30 April 2018, in the occupied building on via di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme where the Orchestra Notturna Clandestina played for twelve hours straight, a girl from Palermo also sat down at the piano. Carlotta Maestrini was twelve. The following year she came back, for the second edition of the rave, again conducted by Giovanni Sollima and Enrico Melozzi.
She was already a veteran, in her way. Born in Palermo on 14 November 2005, she begins the piano at five with Valeria Adamo at the Alessandro Scarlatti Conservatory. At nine she makes her orchestral debut in Haydn’s Concerto in D major in Lecce, conducted by Francesco Libetta. Then the Teatro Bellini in Catania, the Teatro Massimo in Palermo with Mozart’s Concerto K. 40, the United States, where in 2016 she plays Haydn with the Greenwich Orchestra and in 2019 is invited to the Miami Piano Festival. It is she, at the piano, who inaugurates the 100 Cellos in the Rai studios, under the direction of Sollima.
Her first record is previewed in Amadeus, in the issue marking the magazine’s thirtieth anniversary.
It is called L’Alouette, Glinka’s lark, and was recorded at the Bartók Studio in September 2019: Haydn, Mozart, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Glinka. Amadeus presents it in December of that year, and the label Movimento Classical releases it in October 2020. In the meantime the prizes pile up, the Campochiaro, the Steinway in Verona, the Premio Eliodoro Sollima, the Premio Abbado, the Ibla competition, the Città dei Talenti recognition in 2018. Then Geneva, at the Haute École de Musique, with Ricardo Castro: it is he who teaches her piano and orchestral conducting. Among her teachers are also the pianist Andrea Lucchesini and Donatella Sollima, Giovanni’s sister.
Then there is the duo with Giovanni Sollima. Together they have played at the Sale Apollinee of La Fenice, in the Ridotto dei palchi of La Scala, at the Museo Nazionale in Ravenna for the Ravenna Festival 2022, and then in Trieste, Livorno, Rovigo, Modica, Tropea, Palermo. In June 2022 they recorded Untitled, for Movimento Classical, with Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Eliodoro and Giovanni Sollima. Their programmes are a lesson in musical geography: Beethoven’s Sonata op. 5 no. 2, an Aria by Sollima senior written in 1945, Sollima junior’s Sonata 2050, built on fragments of Beethoven and Bach, and to close Kashmir by Led Zeppelin and Chop Suey! by System of a Down.
With Sollima and the Solisti del Teatro alla Scala she recorded the soundtrack of Antonio Albanese’s Cento domeniche.
The rest of the CV has the variety of someone who plays a lot: Palazzo Pitti in Florence, the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan with the Orchestra Coccia of Novara, the Accademia Filarmonica Romana, the Filarmonica Umbra, the trio with Sollima and the violinist Clarissa Bevilacqua at the Ponchielli in Cremona and at the Filarmonica in Trento. All this before the age of twenty-one.
Twenty-one, which she turns on 14 November. The day after, Sunday the 15th, she returns to play with the Orchestra Notturna Clandestina, this time in the Sala Santa Cecilia of the Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone, for The Classical Rave Party, the evening that closes the Romaeuropa Festival 2026 in collaboration with the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Eight years ago the clandestine night was held in an occupied building, and she was twelve. In the coming weeks Melos will put a few questions to her. Tickets at romaeuropa.net, TicketOne and Vivaticket.