Steinway Spirio transmits Hayato Sumino's live concert from Wehrheim to Mainz and 10,000 pianos worldwide
On Monday evening, Japanese pianist Hayato Sumino will perform at a brewery in Wehrheim, while a Steinway Spirio grand piano in Mainz replicates every keystroke in real time, and 10,000 other Spirio instruments worldwide can follow the concert.
Japanese composer and pianist Hayato Sumino, a three-time Opus Klassik winner and this year's Artist in Residence at the Rheingau Music Festival, will give a live concert on Monday evening at the Löwenherz Privatbrauerei in Wehrheim im Taunus. About 100 guests will attend in person. At the same moment, a Steinway Spirio grand piano in the Kalkhof-Rose-Saal of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz will reproduce every note he plays, and the performance can be followed on roughly 10,000 other Spirio-equipped instruments around the world.
How the self-playing system works
An optical measurement system tracks the velocity of all 88 hammer heads 800 times per second, capturing 1,000 dynamic levels and more than 250 positions of the damper and shift pedals. Inside the receiving piano, 88 small plastic pushers driven by electromagnets move the keys and the action from below, exactly as if the artist were sitting at the instrument. The pedal sounds are reproduced authentically, though the pedals themselves do not move.
The artist is not here.
Marko Hartung, head of Steinway & Sons in Frankfurt, describes the difference between the live concert in Wehrheim and the one in Mainz with that simple phrase. A large screen in the Academy hall also shows Sumino's performance. Hartung compares the experience to watching a football World Cup match: "Two goals stand in your home and the ball moves – alongside the TV broadcast."
Global reach and the price of a Spirio piano
Live transmissions with the Spirio technology have been available since 2022. A Spirio-equipped grand piano costs around 235,000 euros, which includes a library of reproduced live performances and invitations to live concerts such as Sumino's. About 500 of these instruments are in Germany, some in private homes and others in smaller concert halls like the Academy's.
The Academy's chamber music hall
The Kalkhof-Rose-Saal, donated by patron Sibylle Kalkhof-Rose (1925–2022) at a cost of about 1.8 million euros, is the only wooden chamber music hall in Germany. It seats 90 to 100 listeners, and some free tickets for Sumino's concert are still available.
That is very well received.
Professor Claudius Geisler, General Secretary of the Academy, says the hall hosts about 50 to 60 free live concerts each year. Sumino's appearance is the third live transmission using Spirio technology in the venue, and the Academy plans to broadcast future concerts from the hall to the world.
