Athough Kafka may have once opined, ‘Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have,’ it’s unlikely he was thinking of having a spare E string tucked about one’s person. Yet the question of how to react when a string snaps on stage arose at a concert I attended by the Berlin Philharmonic under Constantinos Carydis at the opening of a concert hall in the Swiss village of Andermatt in June. €is was already a strange evening. €e fact that a major symphony orchestra was playing in a modest hall in a far-from-established Alpine resort made for a bemused gaggle of journalists – and, I suspect, some equally bemused orchestral musicians. So the likely explanation for what happened when concertmaster Daishin Kashimoto’s E string snapped as he played his solo in Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony op.110a is lowered guards. While you couldn’t blame the players for stopping, their laboured recovery was unusual for such a polished ensemble: a helpless shrug from Kashimoto to Carydis; a further pause before Kashimoto and his desk partner uncertainly swapped instruments; then a lengthy and distracting onstage restringing operation, involving not just the second chair but also the second desk, as Kashimoto and everyone else played on.
Happily, the performance recovered, but the incident was a sharp contrast to a video posted online in 2018, capturing the moment that Thomas Gould’s E string snapped seconds before he launched into a leader’s solo: there was a momentary halt from him but not the orchestra, then a swift, cool-as-a-cucumber instrument switch with his desk partner which enabled his solo to begin right on cue (bit.ly/2mWo7Fv).
Behind every soloist’s quick recovery is an alert orchestra