By Nelson Bennett
(Image: Canadian pianist Stewart Goodyear was at Tom Lee Music on Granville Street to demonstrate a new high-tech Steinway | Photo: Rob Kruyt)
Concert pianist Stewart Goodyear sits down in Tom Lee Music’s piano gallery and begins to play a piece by Johannes Brahms.
The tonal quality is superb. After all, he’s playing a Steinway grand piano.
When he’s finished the piece, he stands up, stands back, and the Steinway begins to play the same piece again – by itself. This is, clearly, no ordinary Steinway. It’s a Spirio – the world’s most high-tech player piano, and for $150,000, you can own one, too.
Using state-of-the-art hardware, software and an iPad, the Spirio faithfully reproduces solo performances by hundreds of notable Steinway artists. But it’s not a recording that’s played back; it’s the piece being replayed on an actual piano.
At $150,000, the target market for the Spirio isn’t pianists, but affluent music aficionados who want the prestige of having a Steinway in their homes but who might not be able to play piano themselves.
“What this allows us to do is reach a large group of what we call adjacent consumers, who are not the Stewart Goodyears that play at an extraordinarily high level, but who appreciate cultural affluence and great music,” said Ron Losby, president of Steinway & Sons, who was in Vancouver last week for the Spirio’s launch.
The Spirio is being unveiled in five test markets in North America. Vancouver is the only test market in Canada.
Tom Lee Music is the exclusive dealer for Steinway in B.C., so the Spirio was launched last week at Tom Lee’s Granville Street store in Vancouver, which has one floor dedicated just to pianos. Headquartered in Hong Kong, Tom Lee Music has eight stores in B.C.
Vancouver was chosen for a test market because of its economic and cultural affluence and its large Asian population.
“Vancouver is a piano town,” said Tom Lee vice-president Graham Blank. “There are a lot of piano teachers, many great institutions, we’ve got a great symphony and opera, and we have a great music and arts community. Piano playing in Asian culture – Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China – it’s part of their culture.”
But not everyone who plays the piano can afford a Steinway, which start at $70,000. And not everyone who can afford a Steinway can play one. And that’s the market the Spirio was designed for.
Steinway is using recently developed technology to solve some of the problems that have plagued player pianos since they were invented in the late 1800s. The keys are activated by electric-powered solenoids. Optical sensors are used to determine how hard the hammer should strike a piano string, based on software that analyzes the sound of the performer who was recorded playing a piece.
Steinway has brought some of the world’s best pianists into the studio to record their performances. The recordings are then reproduced on a Steinway piano. It’s a bit like having a renowned concert pianist playing at your cocktail party without having to hire him or her to come and play.
The Spirio comes with an iPad that is preloaded with 700 hours of solo performances by some of the world’s greatest pianists, and the catalogue is constantly updated.
The Spirio is initially being offered on Steinway’s Model B Music Room grand piano, and will later be offered in two other models, including a medium grand.
