Steinway tells buyers, you can get a star to play on your piano
NewsSteinway has introduced a feature that allows live performances to be streamed on its self-playing pianos.
Name your pianist and performance and it can be delivered to your livingroom grand.
According to this report Steinway’s self-playing pianos, introduced in 2015, now command almost half of the company’s piano sales.
Steinway image, pianist unidentified
This is the perfect thing for those ghost hunters. “If you’re here…”
Wow-and this only cost you….start adding figures…
That’s quite cool!
No, thank you.
Just in time for the next pandemic.
There’s a Steinway store in Beverly Hills with giant windows where they have breathtakingly beautiful pianos you can see from your car driving by, including startling shades of pink and red, the display always changing. Thinking of that color scheme, the next step might be allowing pianists to sample their dress and have that pattern immediately adorn the body of the piano for performances as an option to the traditional stately onyx.
http://azuremilesrecords.com/aboutapianist.html
I’m surprised that this makes for half of Steinway sales. Who buys this kind of stuff ?
People who can afford it.
Amazing grand piano. How much does it cost? How can i have one?
But can it stream MIDI and play all orchestral instruments in a symphony simultaneously like my Casio Privia?
Impressive technical specs. 1,020 dynamic levels and 256 pedal positions.
I’m troubled by the copyright issues. Presumably living performers have some control over this.
I’m just reading a splendid book “Leaving the building” about the ruthless and often distasteful cashing in taking place on the legacies of deceased pop stars.
I’m wondering about how Glenn Gould would feel about being marketed as “Live in your home.” The offering of his 1955 Goldberg is presented as “an astounding recreation.” The Steinway brochure makes no mention of the 1981 recording.
When I play the CDs, I don’t think of him as being “Live in my home.” All Steinway is offering a reproduction of that recording through a dubious alternative medium – a different piano.
The brochure is only a summary, but I see no mention of Lola Astanova. It’ll take some doing to create an authentic replication of her playing “Live in my home.”
I’d like to hear Liszt performing his third Annees de Pelerinage, please.
Let’s see them deliver that!
Huh. I’m surprised that the self-playing pianos are accounting for half their sales. I only ever see them in airports and high-end shopping malls. I guess me and my social circle content ourselves with plain old self-operated pianos like the peasants that we are.
Steinway sends me their promotional emails and my favorite one during the pandemic invited me to buy a new Steinway over Zoom, with the salesperson playing it for me so I could decide on an instrument. No need to play it myself, right?
That’s an extraordinary story. The idea that one should lay out THAT sort of money (a) without getting a feel for the instrument and (b) assessing its sound through a Zoom connection.
I had to register to be able to download the brochure. I got a courteous, but not pushy, email offering assistance if I needed it.
When I win my millions with lotto, I will know how to spend some of it now.
All I said in my comment that mysteriously disappeared was that the “unidentified” pianist in the top photo here looks very much like Yuja Wang.
If anyone from Steinway is following this trail, please add an “unsubscribe” feature to your emails. I only registered to download the brochure, because I was interested in the specs.
I have a harpsichord and a spinet and I have no intention at all of switching to a piano.
Thank you.