The NY Post is reporting:



Apparently he sub-leased his apartment, and the tenant stole the Yamaha CF-III (?) piano.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/pian...1#ixzz2LglmsEgR

“Pianos don’t have insurance,” he told the Daily News Thursday. “Violins do. Violins can be stolen easily. A piano is not something you can put in your pocket.”

Yes they do...

I have separate insurance on my pianos. But I don't expect them to be stolen!

Sounds like he didn't do a credit and background check on the renter either...

I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan like the pianist in that article but in a much more modest apartment than Dong.

I have joked with some people that although my piano is insured against damage and theft I'd really like to get a reduction and remove the theft part. Who's going to steal a 1000+ pound Mason Hamlin BB? But that was before I read this article.

Nice that they were able to recover the piano at the end of everything.

Some videos of him performing as a young boy and as an adult:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAhyj7iyFxc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYg3VJyS6p4

The best performance of Libertango I have heard(4H with Alexandre Tharaud)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrjZErlB2F0

A short bio. He has won many prizes and even rejected a third place prize in the Queen Elizabeth Competition.
http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Lim-Dong-Hyek.htm

Insurance.

The moment I had a delivery date for my new piano (and the previous one), I contacted my insurance company to arrange insurance. Similarly with my organ - they're both insured for replacement value (organ was second hand, piano went up by $10,000 between purchase and delivery).

Where in the article did it say he was able to recover the piano? I read it and got that at the end of article the shipper would not release the piano.

If the mover doesn't release the piano, this will probably end in a lawsuit, and the pianist will probably win, assuming he has proof of ownership. Though, I have to say... what an idiot!

Guy comes up a little short to be a proper Darwin Award contender, but I think we could grant him an Honorable Mention.

"Losing a piano?" Thanks to the second sub-lessee (but I don't really know who either of them are), from my luxury condo in the Trump Tower, and my clothes and stereo too.

And as if the dog hadn't eaten enough homework, "The shipper wouldn't return my stolen property, once the police traced it to his warehouse..."

Thrill Science, this story is thrilling--- I'll grant you that--- but it all seems SO improbable, I think either we're being had, or you are. A little early for April Fools Day, too. Think of the picture: the hapless pianist wandering naked through the streets of Manhattan, clothed only in a skimpy breechclout (in February) fashioned from the first sublease, with only a piano bench to shelter him and only the unplugged headphones from his stereo to keep his ears warm.

This story could be in every newspaper on earth and all the cable news channels, too, and I still wouldn't believe it.

Now he has two firsts to his name:

1) First winner in a major competition to reject his 3rd place prize, arguing that the judges were biased against him.

2) First concert pianist to have his concert grand stolen from his own apartment.

He's the sort of guy who's probably going to reach for yet another first: first tenant to sue Donald Trump for the lax security in one of his luxury apartment buildings.

I bet the moving company gets sued, too.

In mid-December, I was contacted by an anonymous seller (yahoo address, no phone) living in Manhattan, offering to sell a late-model CFIIIS for $38k. Most interestingly, the contact name was "Lim". I was also given the serial. I never responded to what I thought was spam or a scam.

Follow the logic and it could be even more devious than the article describes, but who knows.

I can't stop thinking about that George Carlin bit:

Sentences that have NEVER been said:
"Hand me that piano."

ps the other two were:
"Please saw my legs off."
"Do what you want to the girl, but leave me alone!"

Didn't Winston Smith basically say that at the end of 1984?

Only a member of this forum could correct
a George Carlin bit!

"Do it to her! Do it to Julia!
I don’t care what you do to her, but do it to her!
Tear her my face off! Do it to Julia, not to me!
Do it to Julia!
Not me!"

A nightmarish novel. A true work of genius, but much to depressing to contemplate.


No, much better to listen to Bach.

Interesting. It could be that the sublettor used "Lim" deliberately to impersonate the owner. Or it could something else entirely more devious, as you note.

Piano theivery doesn't normally come from guys with masks and the truck with the leaky exhaust. What usually happens and I had several consignments over the years that happened like this.

Someone allows another party to borrow a piano and use it at their house. Then the person moves and either leaves the piano behind and makes some " Pact" with the landlord that he/she is coming back to get it.

The landlord then salivates at the possibilty to make huge $$$$ and puts it up for sale.

I had a landlord like that show up to get his " check" once while some detectives waited in a closet. You have to do your homework and almost do a background check on consignments especially these days.

"...I had a landlord like that show up to get his " check" once while some detectives waited in a closet..."

And I thought the story had gone as far as it could. A failure of imagination on my part, of course. Next we will learn that there were, not only detectives, but a television crew in the closet, and a stripper an exotic dancer lurking inside the piano case (a midget, perhaps), waiting for the guilty landlord to open the lid and show off the works.

It is a wicked world. News at five.

The thing about that was that those detectives really weren't interested in him. They wanted the name of the renter since she skipped on financing and took the piano with them a few times state to state.