Man serenades blind elephants with Beethoven

Elephants never forget, according to the saying – and these ones will always remember when Briton Paul Barton serenaded them with Beethoven.

Mr Barton, 50, dragged his piano up a mountain in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, to help raise money for blind elephants.

He said: ‘It was a 50th birthday present to myself. My wife and I have been working with blind elephants for many years, and I thought it might be something they would enjoy to listen to.

‘I sat down and thought, what do you play to an elephant?

‘You only get a short time, so I started trawling through my books and then Slow Movement 2 from Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata just stuck.

‘I had to drag the piano up a mountain – I have a really bad back, but I wanted to make the effort so I could feel like I had undergone a personal challenge.’

Yorkshire-born Paul now hopes to put on a concert with the elephants to raise funds for an electric fence for the sanctuary where they live.

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