2012, 1x Audio-CD, 55'09'' Pina Napolitano Arnold Schönberg:Drei Klavierstücke op. 11Sechs kleine Klavierstücke op. 19Fünf Klavierstücke op. 23Suite für Klavier op. 25Klavierstück op. 33aKlavierstück op. 33b Exploring what she terms as Schoenberg's 'exasperated Romanticism' through his solo piano works, Napolitano produces playing of rare penetration, understanding, grace and elegance. (5 STARS - BBC Music Magazine, Calum MacDonald, Christmas Edition 2012) The rush of talent is as limitless as the infinity of labels that now flourish where once the majors commanded attention. Winnowing wheat from chaff becomes ever more difficult and the risk of missing a remarkable artist is a constant anxiety. Odradek is a start-up label based in Italy and committed to new artists and modern work. A one-CD album of Arnold Schoenberg’s solo piano works has not come my way for years, perhaps since Pollini three decades ago. Pina Napolitano plays the tricky pieces with light fingers and innate wit, bringing out a welter of contemporary parallels – Mahler in op 11/2, Busoni in op 23 – amid a panoply of delicate beauty. (La Scena Musicale, CD of the Week, Norman Lebrecht May 21, 2012) It is a beautiful disc, an interpretation that is both intelligent and sensitive, of great contrapuntal clarity and an extraordinary variety of touch. (Dino Villatico, music critic of L’Espresso January 18, 2013) For the praiseworthy US non-profit label, Odradek Records, which has created a catalog dedicated to the modernist classics and some contemporaries, the young and gifted pianist Pina Napolitano has documented her take on Schoenberg - basing herself on a meticulous reading, focused especially on the articulation signs, with a dark shimmering sound with an extremely dense legato, taking as her guiding principle Schoenberg’s request: ‘Always sing with all your soul and create a legato as in a cantilena.’ In doing this, she takes her time to allow the sound to become wholly saturated with expression, sometimes even becoming too pregnant with meaning. (Österreichische Musikzeitschrift, Walter Weidringer, April 2013)
