Classical

Human Universe

Music
by Hayato Sumino | Jun 17, 2025

Music

Sonics

Early in 2023, Daisy Woodward wrote a piece for BBC Culture about the surprising surge in popularity of classical music among young adults. Among other things, she cited a survey finding that 74% of UK residents under 25 would be listening to orchestral music at Christmas, versus 46% of people 55 or older. But it wasn’t just orchestral music, or only in the UK. Classical music had somehow become cool.

How did that happen? The answer’s no longer so surprising. When the pandemic shut down performance venues, groups—and especially young soloists whose careers faced extinction—scrambled to bring content online. Thus their work entered the media stream of Gen Z and young millennials, where likes and algorithms introduced them to millions with little prior exposure to art music. No dressing up, no expensive tickets, no anxiety about etiquette. Real people were posting from their living rooms and even having fun with the music. Such approachability wasn’t entirely new—witness baritone Babatunde Akinboboye larking Figaro’s aria “Largo al factotum” over the beat of Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” on YouTube in 2018—but it achieved a totally different scale.

Hayato Sumino was one of those soloists. As “Cateen,” he’d posted on YouTube since middle school, but during the pandemic he made it a focus. Today his channel has more than 1.4 million subscribers.

Taught by his mother from age three, Sumino felt a natural affinity for the piano and entered youth competitions in Japan. He later developed an interest in science alongside his love for music, taking in 2020 not a conservatory diploma but a master’s degree from the University of Tokyo. In 2018 he won the grand prize at Japan’s PTNA Piano Competition, and two years later gave up a research career in favor of full-time musicianship.

Sumino’s international concert career was launched by the response to his performance in the 2021 Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, where he reached the semifinal round. His first-round program was a favorite with the live audience and his second round received 45,000 online views. He was subsequently engaged to tour Japan with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop, where in 2022 he recorded the Chopin concerto he had prepared for the Competition finals.

Human Universe is thus Sumino’s third album, but his first for Sony Classical. It showcases the range of his historical influences, as well as his own compositions and arrangements. Its principal mood is wonder at a musical cosmos, but the program is warmly humane, including “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” as arranged by Dame Myra Hess, who gave free concerts in the National Gallery during the Blitz; the Chopin C-minor Nocturne Sumino played in the Warsaw Competition; and Hans Zimmer’s “Day One” from Interstellar. It concludes with his own 7 Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, nodding to Mozart before running through increasingly fearsome changes in completely orthogonal idioms—a spectacular encore. Sony gives the piano excellent sound throughout.

Tags: MUSIC CLASSICAL