This has got to be up there on the list of a moving company’s worst nightmares: Movers dropped and destroyed a grand piano worth an estimated $194,000. The piano, a handmade Fazioli, belonged to Canadian virtuoso Angela Hewitt, whom CNN calls “one of the world’s leading classical pianists.”
A heartbroken Hewitt announced the loss Sunday on Facebook, saying she’d been too shocked in the immediate aftermath of the incident 10 days prior to reveal what had happened. “At the end of my most recent CD recording sessions (Beethoven Variations in Berlin), when I was so happy with the results and feeling elated, the piano movers came into the control room (where I was finishing up with my producer) to say they had dropped my precious Fazioli concert grand piano. My very own that I have used for all of my CD recordings done in Europe since 2003 (and of course for many concerts),” she wrote.
Paolo Fazioli, the owner of Fazioli Pianos, declared the F278—the only one of that model in the world with four pedals—unsalvageable. “The iron frame is broken, as well as much else in the structure and action (not to mention the lid and other parts of the case),” Hewitt wrote. “It’s kaputt. The movers of course were mortified. In 35 years of doing their job, this had never happened before. At least nobody was hurt.”
Well, I’ll never let those bastards handle my organ.
From the source link’s comments:
UncleJohn42 —
“She was so distraught she almost forgot to plug her latest CD.”
(@UncleJohn42, if you’re here — hat tip.
If you’re not — you should be.)
“At least no one got hurt.”
There are some people that wish someone died in the incident.
I wonder how she feels about abortion on demand.
It was her best friend and companion. Maybe she should get out more.
“But that’s a priceless Fazioli!”
“Not any more”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74YLwinLT7M
Her pain must have been SHARP when she found out her piano was FLAT, but at least now the Fazioli can REST!
Linking to cnn?
Don’t.
She should have learned to play the harmonica.
FTA – “she dragged it around for her recordings”
Before she wuz famous it wuz a real bitch gettin that thing on the Greyhound!
Ummm, wouldn’t it be easier to build a recording studio around the piano?
I love Faziolis. Their garlic bread sticks are a meal unto themselves.
Hope she had insurance, Moving company’s liability is strictly reduced courtesy of a few gov’t agencies.
Never let a bunch of guys who really don’t know what the hell they’re doing move an upright piano in the back of a pickup truck for one of your roommates girlfriends who later became his wife. Yep, we ended up dropping the piano over the side of the p/u when my friend took a corner too fast and the piano went over the side and broke all over the place. Fortunately for him he’s still married to her after 40 + years, the piano never made it. She thought we were a bunch of idiots for wrecking her piano like that, and I don’t think she ever trusted us to move anything ever again for her.
It was transposed way too low. At least she knew what happened to it, versus the guys that leave their instruments in a taxi or on a train and never see it again. Still gotta hurt.
“Fearing being sued for only hiring 250+ pound movers, and needing to hire an ‘all inclusive’ workforce, the two employees used to move this elegant piano were both 46 pound trans midgets.
Company president, Mustaffa Hussein, said ‘they were the two best midgets we had.'”
There’s always the accordion…
In 1975, on RAF Alconbury in the UK, I watched a truck slowly going down the road. As it rounded the north end of the runway, the piano in the back began to tilt. I watched as it fell from the truck onto the road smashing into hundreds of pieces. Apparently, it wasn’t going slow enough.