Pianist Sunwoo Yekwon is planning to show the public around the Lotte Concert Hall in virtual reality. The Lotte Foundation for Arts and LG Uplus, a major local telecom operator, joined hands to present a VR tour of the Lotte Concert Hall in Jamsil, eastern Seoul, featuring celebrated pianist Sunwoo Yekwon as the docent.

In the first video, Sunwoo appears in the audience and looks around the venue, joined by a house manager. They walk around the vineyard-style classical music concert hall, built in a box-in-box formation, explaining how the sound flows in the room.

Sunwoo also meets with organist Park Joon-ho, who leads the concert hall’s “Organ Odyssey” series. Park introduces the pipe organ, which has 5,000 pipes laid out across three floors.

The pianist moves to the piano storage room, where he listens to instructions on how to care for the instrument, including the proper temperature and humidity. Sunwoo explains his standards for selecting a piano.

In the second video, Sunwoo plays the piano that he picked out in the storage room and plays Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 10 in C major, K. 330 and “Turkish March” arranged by Russian pianist Arcadi Volodos from his recent album, “Mozart,” released under the Decca label.

“It was interesting to learn about the concert hall, where I have only performed on the stage, from the audience seats to the backstage,” Sunwoo said.

The VR tour is available in the Lotte Concert Hall’s lobby Dec. 30-31, when it hosts its year-end concerts. It is also available through the Uplus VR app operated by the major mobile carrier.

By Im Eun-byel (silverstar@heraldcorp.com)