What just happened? The scene of the Bosendorfer accident. Photograph: Penny Adie/PA
Today's news photo of a Bosendorfer grand piano lying upside down on an embankment after falling off the back of a delivery van is haunting. Why is it so upsetting to see a piano smashed to pieces? Or is it only upsetting for pianists?
Some people may think that a piano is a mechanical thing, a collection of hammers and levers in a big case - perhaps just an attractive piece of furniture. But for pianists, the piano is their voice. It's the means by which they are heard. When you practise a piano for long periods you become bonded to it, as any workman does to his favourite tools. Without being too fanciful, I could say that the pianist's body image stretches out to include the whole piano. Player and instrument become a huge friendly unit, an amalgam of two companions. When you play the piano you know rationally that the sound comes out of the instrument, but in a funny way it seems as if the piano simply enables the sound to come out of you.
Although you get most attached to your own piano, you can become very fond of particular pianos in different concert halls. Each has its own personality and can suggest different ways of playing and hearing. Sometimes you have the opportunity to hire a piano of your choice for a concert or a recording session. It's possible to become quite superstitious about certain pianos, believing that their presence will enable you to achieve your best.
We shrink away from photos of car crashes, knowing that people must have been inside the cars. Nobody, I hope, was inside the Bosendorfer, but the image of the smashed piano is nevertheless a painful one. Whenever I watch Billy Elliot, I have to look away when Billy's dad smashes up their piano for firewood. For him it's just a practical solution to a problem; for me, the furious hammer blows are destroying more than wood and metal.
Today's photo reminded me of an event near the end of the career of Domus, a chamber music group of which I was the pianist. We travelled around with our own portable concert hall, a 200-seater geodesic dome which we put up and took down ourselves. We also had a trailer in which we hauled around our piano. On a trip to Germany we were kindly lent an upright piano, but one night on the motorway our van and trailer were hit by a lorry. The piano was smashed to pieces and strewn across the motorway. Its destruction was in fact one of the least serious outcomes of the accident, which had far-reaching consequences, but for me the ruined piano remains the symbol of that day.
