“A unique piano which was treasured by the Canadian virtuoso Angela Hewitt as her ‘best friend’ was broken beyond repair when it was dropped by specialist instrument movers,” writes Matthew Weaver in Tuesday’s (2/11) Guardian (U.K.). “The expensive accident happened late last month after Hewitt finished recording Beethoven’s piano variations at a studio in Berlin. She said it left her in such shock that it took her 10 days before she could announce the news to her followers. In a Facebook post Hewitt said her F278 Fazioli, the only one in the world fitted with four pedals, and worth at least £150,000, was ‘kaputt.’ … The broken instrument was inspected by the firm’s Italian founder, Paolo Fazioli, who declared it ‘unsalvageable.’ The piano’s iron frame smashed when the 590kg instrument dropped as movers tried to lift it on to a trolley. The force of the break, compounded by the high tensions in the piano’s strings, was so strong that it split the piano’s lid in two…. The unnamed firm of movers was ‘mortified’ by the accident, [Hewitt] said. ‘In 35 years of doing their job, this had never happened before,’ she wrote.”
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