Ed Zubrow wrote:

>Watching live from Lincoln Center tonight, I confess my eyes were drawn to
>Anne-Sophie Mutter's strapless gown.

Not an unusual reaction from a red-blooded male:-)

>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?

Every violinist is different, of course, but most put a hankie or something
on their shoulder or chin to protect from abrasion.  Look closely at some
violinists and you will often see what looks like a hicky there under the
left side of their jaw.  The hankie is to cushion it a bit.  The hankie on
the shoulder, of course, in the case of Strapless Sophie, is to stop the
fiddle from sliding off her shoulder, or also to protect the wood from
sweat or the oils present in the skin which can damage the instrument.  I'm
a cellist, and I tend to put a towel or hankie between the instrument and
my chest, or I get zits.  It's a tough profession.

>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?

Well, what it sounds like is that she broke a hair on the bow (they're
hairs from a certain breed of horse found, I believe, in Scotland.) This
is inconsequential, only means that she was digging in.  Happens all the
time.  If she broke a string on the instrument she probably would have
had to stop and either replace the string or, what's often done, grab the
concertmaster's instrument and finish the piece.  The great single-named
violinist Midori got huge publicity from a concert she did when she was
like 14, with the BSO at Tanglewood, I think, and she broke a string in
the middle of the Tchaikowsky.  Rather than stop the performance (you
simply can't continue after breaking a string, either you need it for
certain notes, also the breaking of one string changes the pressure on
the bridge and throws the other strings out of tune) she reached over and
borrowed the concertmaster's violin and continued.  Then a string broke
on his instrument too, and she calmly reached over and took the assistant
concertmaster's fiddle, and finished the concerto on her third violin of
the evening.

>...  Excerpts from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliette Ballet were magnificent
>and both the Sibelius and Berg Concertos allowed Ms Mutter to display her
>talents.

And her shoulders.

Dave Runnion
Mallorca