In July 2020, a Japanese pianist named Hayato Sumino sat down at his piano to record a video for his YouTube channel, Cateen.
In it, he performs “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” seven times in a row. Each time he ups the technical content, until by the end he is performing a virtuoso arrangement.
This video alone has, to date, garnered over 14 million views.
7 levels of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”
The success of this video suggests what a modern classical musician’s career could look like: one that initially begins online, without the involvement of traditional classical music gatekeepers.
Hayato Sumino was born on 14 July 1995 in Tokyo. He began playing piano at the age of three, and started his YouTube channel – username “Cateen” – in 2010, at the age of fifteen.
He pursued other passions in addition to his musical studies.
For instance, he earned a degree in science and engineering at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, where he graduated in 2020.
He has since become an online – and offline – piano star. He has been named to Forbes Japan “30 Under 30” and has been named an ambassador for Apple Music Classical. He has also promoted Casio, and he became a Steinway artist in 2021.
We wrote about his 2023 Hong Kong debut here: https://interlude.hk/hayato-sumino-cateen-pushed-creative-boundaries-in-hong-kong-debut/
The YouTube Channel That Made Classical Music Go Viral
Hayato Sumino
Since his YouTube channel’s start in 2010, Cateen’s 310 main channel videos have garnered over 250 million views.
His most popular video to date remains the 2020 Twinkle video. His other viral videos include:
A medley based on Mozart‘s Rondo Alla Turca, played at a seemingly impossible fast speed on a tiny toy piano (12 million views)
Mozart – Rondo Alla Turca (Turkish March) Medley on Toy Piano
An arrangement of a theme from the soundtrack of animated Japanese fantasy film Howl’s Moving Castle, featuring melodica (12 million views)
[Melodica × Grand Piano] Howl’s Moving Castle – Merry Go Round of Life (Joe Hisaishi)
Variations on the Happy Birthday song in all twelve major keys (3.7 million views)
Happy Birthday To Everyone (Variations in all 12 major keys)
A performance of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop from 2022 (4.2 million views)
Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11 (Live) – Hayato Sumino
That Chopin concerto is interesting in that it is a straight performance of classical music with orchestra: a performance, perhaps, more by Hayato Sumino, trained classical pianist, than by Cateen, YouTube creator.
In the summer of 2024, he gave an interview with the Chicago Symphony before he appeared with the orchestra at the Ravinia Festival.
In this interview, he described why he started his YouTube channel as a teenager: “It was purely for fun, driven by my curiosity and enjoyment… Back then, I never imagined I would gain this much popularity.”
He expressed satisfaction that the channel allowed him to experiment and upload whatever kind of music he wanted, rather than being forced to adhere to any single genre or format.
He also enjoyed the instant feedback from the comment section and interacting with listeners that way.
An Unlikely Path: Engineering, AI, and the Piano
Hayato Sumino
Unlike many of his soloist colleagues, Hayato Sumino studied both science and engineering. He attended the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, as well as the French Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM) in Paris, studying music information processing and AI.
Although he continued playing piano and winning awards during his university career (for instance, he won the Grand Prix at the 42nd PTNA Piano Competition in Japan in 2018, as well as third place in the Lyon International Piano Competition in 2019), he still harboured doubts about whether he could make it in music professionally.
He told the Chicago Symphony that after the 2018 competition victory, “It took me two [more] years to finally decide to be a full-time musician and give up becoming a researcher.”
In January 2025, he reflected on his career path to the South China Morning Post:
“I made a risky decision when I became a full-time musician. But with AI, the world has changed. Now, maybe engineering work is not so secure but the physicality of the human body cannot be replaced. Using my own body to express music cannot be replaced, no matter how generative AI evolves in the future.”
The 2021 Chopin Competition That Changed Everything
One of the biggest moments in Hayato Sumino’s career occurred in the fall of 2021, when he competed in the Chopin Competition.
The Chopin Competition is held every five years in Warsaw and devoted exclusively to performances of Chopin’s music. It lasts for around a month and is one of the most prestigious events in classical music.
At first Sumino was hesitant about entering, believing that the competition represented “moving toward the past.”
But as he thought more about it, he took inspiration from Chopin and his friend Franz Liszt, who both wrote a variety of fantasies on operatic themes – Sumino felt that in many ways, these arrangements were “the pop music” of their own day.
As he told Nikkei Asia, he wanted to “play mazurkas and waltzes as if they were created on the spot – as if I were speaking them in my own language.”
Hayato Sumino’s second Chopin Competition round
Sumino advanced to the semifinal. The livestream of his second-round performance attracted 45,000 concurrent viewers: a record for the competition.
He was disappointed to be cut after the semifinal, reflecting to the Chicago Symphony:
“Of course, I was disappointed right after I heard the result and couldn’t think about it for several weeks. However, the experience and recognition I gained there had a greater impact than I had expected. Until then, I had hardly performed outside Japan. This competition was definitely the starting point of my international career.”
Since he was cut before the final round, which consists of a concerto performance, in 2022, he finished the project by recording Chopin’s first piano concerto with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Marin Alsop.
He told the Chicago Symphony:
“So, performing this piece with a Polish orchestra held special meaning for me, and I was eager to record it when it was decided that I would be touring with this piece. Recording it allowed me to put a period on that chapter of my life.”
Sony Classical, Carnegie Hall, and a Career in Full Flight
Hayato Sumino performing on Human Universe
Hayato Sumino was signed to the legacy label Sony Classical in March 2024.
His debut album with them, Human Universe, was released in November 2024. The disc consists of arrangements of works by Bach, Purcell, Ravel, Debussy, Fauré, and others – as well as modern composers like Hans Zimmer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Sumino himself.
He told the Chicago Symphony:
“What I always want to do is to show the connection between traditional classical music and the modern world we live in now. It’s always interesting for me to find the evolution and connection between now and the past.”
Hayato Sumino performing Ravel’s Boléro on Human Universe
In January 2026 he released a second album on Sony: Chopin Orbit. It consists of works by Sumino as well as Chopin, who he considers to be a kind of idol.
He told the Violin Channel:
“I imagine the listener roaming freely between these two closely connected worlds, old and new, whilst keeping in mind the twist that pieces composed in the 19th century were themselves considered new and different in their time to the music that had gone before, highlighting that we inhabit an ever-evolving musical space.”
He performed at the Budokan arena in Tokyo for his 29th birthday in 2024 and appeared with the Chicago Symphony at the Ravinia Festival in the summer of 2024.
The following year, in late 2025, he made his Carnegie Hall recital debut, then returned in March 2026, playing Gershwin with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Why Hayato Sumino Refuses to Choose
There’s a telling trademark moment in Sumino’s concert performances. He often ends his recitals with the Twinkle Twinkle performance – the same one that made him famous online, performed live, in concert halls that have hosted the greatest pianists in the world.
He could keep the two worlds separate. The concert hall version of Hayato Sumino and the YouTube version of Cateen could exist in parallel, each carefully calibrated for its individual audiences.
He doesn’t, and he says his reasoning is grounded in history. Chopin and Liszt didn’t draw a hard line between serious composition and popular arrangement.
The strict separation between classical music and everything else is a relatively recent institutional habit – and Sumino, with his engineering degree, his 250 million YouTube views, and his Sony Classical contract, seems constitutionally uninterested in maintaining it.
He told the Korea Herald:
“I aim to continue playing the piano, study composition and arranging, and eventually become an artist capable of creating works for film music and piano with orchestras.”
That’s not a musician trying to go viral. That’s a musician aiming to make a mark in the art. So far, he’s succeeding.
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