25 Apr 2024

Pianos on the frontline

From Anzac Day, 10:06 am on 25 April 2024

Emeritus Professor Michael Atherton shares the remarkable story of the lengths troops went too to get pianos to the front during the Second World War.

Before electricity brought us the gramophone, the radio and eventually the TV, the piano was central to family and community life.

Michael's book 'A Coveted Possession: The Rise and Fall of the Piano in Australia' looks at everything from the instruments that floated ashore at Sydney Cove in the late eighteenth century to their adventures across Australia - including at the frontlines of war.

Michael Atherton has written a history of the piano in Australia.

Photo: Blackincbooks & Tod Clarke

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