Movers hit bum note with piano

2007-04-11 16:04

London - British removal men showed that moving grand pianos was not their forte by dropping a £26 000 (R365 985) instrument off the back of a lorry, media reported on Wednesday.

The nine foot (four metre) long Bösendorfer concert grand was being delivered to the Two Moors Musical Festival in Devon, southwest England, where locals had spent two years raising the money to buy it.

Festival organiser Penny Adie was taking photographs of the piano's eagerly-anticipated arrival for the event's archive when the ivories tinkled to the ground.

"It made a noise like 10 honky-tonk pianos being hit by mallets," she told the Daily Telegraph. "Half a ton of piano landing like that must have had a catastrophic effect on its workings."

The Bösendorfer - known as the Rolls-Royce of pianos and favoured by the likes of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt - is expected to be written off by insurers.

Although it cost 26 000 pounds to buy at auction, it could cost double that to replace.

"A Bösendorfer is to a pianist what a Stradivarius is to a string player and we are all numb with shock at what has happened," Adie's husband John told the paper.

London-based G and R Removals, the specialist firm which bungled the move, declined to comment, the Telegraph said.

- AFP