'Rolls-Royce' of pianos destroyed in bungled delivery

As piano pratfalls go, the moment captured here must rank high. Laurel and Hardy could never get to grips with transporting a piano over treacherous terrain. Neither, it seems, can G&R Removals of Chiswick.

The piano removal firm left the organisers of the Two Moors Festival, an annual classical music festival, "distraught" yesterday after it bungled the delivery of a new £45,000 piano.

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

The artistic director Penny Adie, 53, set out to record on camera the moment of triumph when the instrument was delivered to its new owners. Instead, she found herself picturing it crashing to the ground.

Mrs Adie said: "We were just so shocked... I just felt numb. It is a tragedy to see something of such beauty lying on the ground, it was like seeing a priceless painting torn to shreds."

After its trip from London to Barkham Gallery in Sandyway, Somerset, the piano reportedly caught the side of the lorry as it was being offloaded. As a result, it fell 14 feet to the ground. After its initial fall, the piano bounced off a gravel drive, and plunged over a bank before landing on some gravel steps.

Mrs Adie said she does not yet know the full extent of the damage but fears the piano may be a write-off.

The Two Moors Festival was set up in 2001 in the wake of the foot-and-mouth crisis to attract tourists back to Dartmoor and Exmoor. Now up to 5,000 people attend the concerts at rural churches across the West Country, which run for 10 days in October. The Countess of Wessex agreed last year to be its patron.

G&R Removals was unavailable for comment.