Around two years ago, Steinway & Sons launched the digital self-playing system Spirio. On this grand piano you can of course play yourself – if you can – or sit back and listen. Thanks to a constantly expanding concert library, the Spirio plays you world-class concerts: the keys move, visibly, exactly as the concert pianist strikes them. And you can, of course, record your own playing too.
A Digital Passion
Steinway & Sons kept tinkering – simply because today’s technology allows wonderful things. And so the Spiriocast was born. Now your grand piano can relay a concert in real time (with a one- or two-millisecond delay). You watch, say, the Chinese master pianist Lang Lang playing live in Paris – on the iPad or TV – and your piano brings the sound into your private concert salon; the keys move exactly as the star strikes them. It doesn’t replace a live experience, but it opens up whole new dimensions for spreading music and making it accessible. The next step would be the pianist as a hologram at your piano – no, that’s just a slightly far-fetched guess.
Twelve Months by Hand
The price of a Steinway & Sons with Spiriocast sits just under – or perhaps just over – 200,000 francs, depending on your wishes and finish. But you have to bring time, like the convertible driver in the mountains or Lang Lang in Paris: a Steinway is built by hand and takes twelve months to complete; a technician keeps it in tune. Since the company’s founding in 1853 by Heinrich Steinweg – who emigrated to the United States and Americanised his name – every piano has carried a running serial number; no instrument leaves the workshop without one.
This article appeared in MEN issue 2/22 (November 2022).
