Canadian virtuoso Angela Hewitt is grieving the loss of her rare, expensive grand piano, which she called her "best friend" in a Facebook post Saturday, after movers dropped it late last month.
Devastated by the loss, the well-known classical pianist wrote: "It happened ten days ago, and has been such a shock to me that I didn't immediately want to share it with the world."
The destroyed instrument, a Fazioli concert piano, played its final tune at one of Hewitt's recording sessions in Berlin for a coming album of Beethoven variations, which is set for release in November.
"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," she said. "I couldn't believe it."
The movers were not hurt.
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The piano, which, according to CNN, was estimated to be worth $194,000, was not salvageable after the accident. Fazioli Pianos' founder, Paolo Fazioli, himself inspected the damage along with his team. What he found was that the fall broke the instrument's iron frame, the lid and many parts of the internal structure, rendering it a lost cause.
"It's kaputt," Hewitt wrote.
She added that the handmade F278 Fazioli was the only one in the world to have four pedals, a feature normally reserved for the F308 model, and that she had recently replaced its hammers and strings.
"I adored this piano," she said. "It was my best friend, best companion. I loved how it felt when I was recording -- giving me the possibility to do anything I wanted."
Hewitt tweeted that she had kept the piano in her home in Italy but that it had traveled the world with her for nearly all her recordings and several performances over the last 17 years.
"I hope my piano will be happy in piano heaven," she said.