Suggesting piano shifting is not company's forte

Chiswick piano removal firm G&R left the organisers of the Two Moors Festival, an annual classical music festival, "distraught" after it botched the delivery of a new £45,000 instrument.

According to reports, fundraisers for the event, held in Devon and Somerset, had saved for two years to buy the Bosendorfer piano, considered the "Rolls-Royce" of its kind, only to see it fall from the back of a delivery lorry.

The piano is thought to have caught the side of the lorry as it was being offloaded and fell 4m to the ground before bouncing off a gravel drive.

The festival’s artistic director Penny Adie, recorded the moment on camera. She said “We were just so shocked ... It is a tragedy to see something of such beauty lying on the ground."

However, other customers of G&R Removals, who are based in Bollo Lane, have rallied round to show their support. David Hogben, from Oxford-based Courtney's Pianos, was eager to protect the company's reputation telling a local newspaper “We have used G&R Removals for many years, since we opened, and they've moved many pianos for us. In that time we've never had a problem. And all of a sudden we get all this exposure in the press because of one accident.

"We have to put this in proportion against all the other thousands of pianos they move. If you are asking me would I use G&R removals again then the answer is yes."

The piano is currently back in London where the damage is waiting to be independently assessed.

G&R Removals were unable to comment.

March 13, 2007