Having spent two years raising the £26,000 needed to buy a grand piano for the Two Moors Festival in Devon, the organisers were keenly awaiting its delivery. But their 9ft-long Bösendorfer will sadly not be playing any part in this year’s programme after the delivery men accidently dropped it 13ft off the back of a lorry.

John and Penny Adie, the festival organisers to whose house the piano was being delivered, watched aghast as the half-tonne instrument toppled off the lorry, bounced on their gravel drive, and came to rest on a set of stone steps.

Mr Adie, 61, said: “The lift on the back of the lorry was not the most stable of platforms and the 9ft instrument was too long to fit on the platform, so the men jolted it around a bit and thought it was free of the vehicle.

“But it wasn’t, and it bounced on the drive, landing on its side. It kept going and because it was a bank with steps it flicked over and landed on its lid. There was one hell of a crash and all its notes went at once. It fell about 13ft in all.

“I don’t think there’s any way we can trust it now. It’s not the cosmetic damage that you can see; it’s what the hell it’s done to it inside.”

The festival, an attempt to kickstart local businesses after the foot-and-mouth outbreak that hit Dartmoor and Exmoor in 2001, was supposed to be a one-off. But the attention it attracted transformed it into an annual event and it now has the Countess of Wessex as its patron.

The Adies, who organise the festival from their home in South Molton, had previously rented a Steinway at £2,000 a time.

Determined to avoid the expense, the couple had been travelling to a specialist piano auctioneers in London for months. The Bösendorfer — a leading make of piano beloved of Franz Liszt — fitted the bill perfectly.

Sean McIlvoy, the auctioneer, said: “That piano would have cost £90,000 new, but this was a charity with limited funds and for them it was a great buy.”

Mrs Adie, 54, had brought her camera out to record the arrival of the piano, brought by the specialist transporters G&R Removals. Instead she ended up snapping the mayhem.

Mrs Adie said: “I only took before and after shots because I was too dumbstruck to capture the moment when it fell. A Bösendorfer is to a pianist what a Stradivarius is to a string player, and we are all numb with shock.”

The piano’s destruction is all the more galling as the Frank-furt Music Fair had kept many dealers away from the London auction, helping to keep the price down. Despite being insured for the £26,000 they paid for it, they fear it could cost nearly £50,000 to replace. “We were very lucky at the auction and bloody unlucky at the unloading,” Mr Adie said.

The couple are now negotiating with their insurers and G&R Removals, who refused to comment yesterday.

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