What to do when your violin string snaps - Article from Houston Chronicle

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on
stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center
in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert,
you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for
him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has
braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches.
To see him walk across the stage one step at a time,
painfully and slowly, is an unforgettable sight. He walks
painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then
he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes
the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends
the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up
the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and
proceeds to play. By now, the audience is used to this ritual.
They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to
his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the
clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play. But
this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the
first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You
could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room.
There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was
no mistaking what he had to do.

People who were there that night thought to themselves:

"We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps
again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to
either find another violin or else find another string for this
one." But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed
his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.
The orchestra began, and he played from where he had
left off. And he played with such passion and such power
and such purity as they had never heard before. Of course,
anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic
work with just three strings. I know that, and you know
that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that.

You could see him modulating, changing, recomposing
the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was
de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that
they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the
room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an
extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of
the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and
cheering, doing everything we could to show how much
we appreciated what he had done. He smiled, wiped the
sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and
then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive,
reverent tone,

"You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to
find out how much music you can still make
with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever
since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the [way]
of life - not just for artists but for all of us.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering
world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that
we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make
music with what we have left.

Jack Riemer, Houston Chronicle