50 Pianos, Four Continents: How Hailun Became the Instrument of Choice for One of Contemporary Music's Most Ambitious Projects

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There are product endorsements, and then there is this: a leading European contemporary music ensemble selecting your instruments — 50 of them — to carry one of the most technically demanding and logistically complex concert installations in recent classical music history across multiple continents over several years.

In 2023, Hailun Piano Co. became the exclusive project partner for 11,000 Strings, the monumental composition by Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas — a work written for 50 microtonally tuned pianos, performed simultaneously, commissioned and performed by Klangforum Wien, one of Europe's most respected contemporary music ensembles. The project's piano requirements — 50 acoustically distinct instruments capable of precise microtonal tuning, consistent tonal quality across the ensemble, and the structural robustness to sustain intensive touring — went to Hailun.

Understanding why that happened, and what it means, requires understanding both the project itself and what it demanded of the instruments that performed it.

What 11,000 Strings Is

Georg Friedrich Haas is an Austrian composer whose work is centrally concerned with microtonal harmony — the use of pitches that fall between the semitones of conventional Western equal temperament. 11,000 Strings takes this interest to its logical and spectacular extreme: 50 pianos, each tuned to a slightly different microtonal specification, their 11,000 individual strings creating a harmonic environment of extraordinary complexity and subtlety when sounded together.

The work was first performed at the Wiener Konzerthaus in November 2023, with 50 pianists drawn from the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna alongside members of Klangforum Wien. The premiere was widely covered by European contemporary music media as a milestone event in contemporary composition — a work of genuine formal ambition executed at a scale that few organizations could attempt.

The Tour: Vienna to New York

11,000 Strings was not conceived as a one-time installation. Following the Vienna premiere, Hailun's instruments traveled with the project through an international tour that included:

Prague Spring Festival — June 2, 2024
Holland Festival, Amsterdam — June 22, 2024
Düsseldorf Festival — September 15, 2024
KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, Hanover — May 22, 2025
Park Avenue Armory, New York — September 20 – October 6, 2025
Zhejiang Conservatory of Music, Hangzhou — October 30, 2025
MaerzMusik Festival, Berlin — March 2026
Handelsbeurs, Antwerp — May 10, 2026

This is not a regional concert run. It is a sustained international tour across Europe, North America, and China — with Hailun pianos as the instrument infrastructure for every performance.

Why Hailun, and What It Required

The selection of Hailun as the exclusive project partner for 11,000 Strings was not a default decision or a sponsorship arrangement in the conventional sense. The practical requirements of the project were stringent.

Microtonal tuning demands precise string scaling and plate quality — instruments whose construction tolerances are tight enough that tuning deviations from standard pitch are consistent and stable, rather than the artifact of manufacturing inconsistency. Fifty instruments performing simultaneously in a large acoustic space must share a tonal family — a consistency of harmonic character — that allows the microtonal relationships between them to be heard as compositionally intentional rather than the product of incompatible tonal profiles.

The structural demands of touring — repeated transport, climate changes across Central Europe and the Atlantic, the acoustic variables of spaces ranging from a Viennese concert hall to a New York armory — require instruments that hold their regulation and tuning under stress.

Hailun's instruments met all of these requirements across a multi-year, multi-continent tour. That is a form of quality verification that no press release or award can fully replicate.

A Performance Heritage Longer Than the Project

The Klangforum Wien partnership is the most high-profile entry in what is actually a sustained record of Hailun pianos in significant performance contexts. The instruments were selected for use at the 2008 Beijing Olympics — another context in which the quality and reliability requirements were not negotiable. In 2010, Hailun received the NAMM Best in Show Award. And in a recognition that carries particular weight, a Hailun piano was awarded the International Six Golden Star Medal by the European music authority magazine DIAPASON — the first time a Chinese piano had been awarded at that level in a European piano competition of world standing.

These are not marketing claims. They are documented, verifiable events in the history of an instrument that the industry, the press, and the performing community have evaluated and chosen repeatedly.

What This Means for Players Considering Hailun

For a buyer or institution considering a Hailun instrument, the 11,000 Strings partnership provides a specific form of reassurance that is difficult to manufacture: evidence of how Hailun pianos perform under sustained professional demands, in acoustically challenging and logistically demanding environments, evaluated not by a dealership but by one of Europe's most discerning contemporary music ensembles.

The question that buyers sometimes ask about Hailun — "but can it really hold up at a professional level?" — has been answered, repeatedly, by professional musicians and presenters who had no commercial interest in the answer.

Conclusion

When Klangforum Wien needed 50 pianos capable of sustaining one of the most ambitious concert installations in recent contemporary music history across multiple years and four continents, they chose Hailun. That choice — made by serious musicians for serious musical reasons — is the most honest description of what Hailun pianos are capable of.

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