A Coveted Possession: The rise and fall of the piano in Australia
La Trobe University Press, $34.99 pb, 288 pp, 9781863959919
A Coveted Possession: The rise and fall of the piano in Australia by Michael Atherton
In Australia’s golden age of piano production, between 1870 and 1930, the piano was, as Michael Atherton notes, ‘as much a coveted possession as a smartphone or an iPad is today’. The First Fleet imported an eclectic assortment of items, including dogs, rabbits, cattle, seedlings, and a ‘Frederick Beck’ piano. The latter belonged to the naval surgeon George Wogan, who played it on the long voyage. Pianist and historian Geoffrey Lancaster maintains that a piano, of the same brand, now in a collection of 130 instruments owned by the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, is Wogan’s piano.
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