An image of a Steinway that crashed off a stage in Germany has grabbed the attentions of music lovers the world over.

A Steinway grand is the Rolls Royces of pianos, and the world famous manufacturer’s international reputation for musical excellence is matched by their hefty price tags. A new Steinway Model D can cost as much as $300,000AUD, so when a picture emerged over the weekend of a Steinway grand that had crashed, belly-up, from a stage in Germany, it caught the attentions of music lovers around the world who have shared the image thousands of times on both Facebook and Twitter.

The concert catastrophe occurred in Frickingen, Germany, just 90 minutes before Austrian pianist Stefan Vladar was due to play Brahms’ B flat major concerto on the instrument on Saturday evening. The image was originally posted to Facebook by fellow pianist Iva Návatová, who was playing Stravinsky’s Firebird suite in the same performance. Návatová said that the instrument had rolled off the edge of a wing-stage, which had buckled under its weight.

Remarkably the piano was still in playable condition once it was righted, and the concert went ahead as planned. While reportedly the lid and legs will need to be replaced, the mechanism and strings survived the calamitous fall – a testament to the hardy engineering of the world’s most revered piano makers.