Four Movements

50 years, four people, one piano

By: Sally Brooks

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In 1959, Nancy’s life changes dramatically when her family moves to a new town, Stevenage. Now there is room for a piano, Nancy loses herself in an imagined past of Mozart’s lesser known sister, while making unexpected discoveries of her own inscrutable mother’s history.

In 1989 the piano becomes a fixture in a women’s community centre in the town, in a time of personal strife for Martha and her friends. The politics of the era threaten the existence of the centre, and the future of this group of women.

A troubled young man buys the piano in 1997 and places it in his sparse flat at a time of emotional turmoil, as he becomes involved in the party-political life of a town at the heart of the general election campaign.

By the time school girls Tamsin and Lauren find it in 2011, it has been long abandoned. They bring it back to life in a bid to forget the grief that holds them together.