Ed Zubrow wrote, in part:

>Watching live from Lincoln Center tonight, I confess my eyes were drawn to
>Anne-Sophie Mutter's strapless gown.  I noticed that at one point she put
>a handkerchief across her shoulder.  I've also seen violinists place a
>handkerchief under their chin, but she did not do this.  What gives?

Prolonged contact with the skin, particularly when one is sweating a bit,
would damage the finish, and thus the tone, of the violin.  Mutter's violin
was probably equipped with an ebony or rosewood chin rest, making a
handkerchief there redundant.  But the handkerchief underneath would
protect the instrument from her naked flesh.

>Also, at the conclusion of the Sibelius Concerto, during her last long
>solo, she broke a string.  She continued to play the solo part with the
>string flapping, then appeared to pluck off the string before her final
>passage.  How critical is a broken string and how risky is it to pluck one
>off at such a time?

Was it a string she broke, or a bow hair? Bow hairs routinely break and
are routinely plucked off at the first opportunity.  You can't pluck off a
broken string, though a good violinist can play most things with one broken
string, as long as it's not the G-string.

(I trust that none of my proper and pure fellow list members found any
resonance in Anne-Sophie Mutter, naked flesh and G-strings being mentioned
in the same post.)

Richard, who invites you to visit his music, outdoors and other pages at
http://www.magi.com/~richard/