String Breaking

[pianist7]

How would it be possible to break a piano string whilst playing? I am not planning on trying.

[pianowolfi]

Well it can happen...

 

[lostinidlewonder]

When I was visiting Turkey I did a concert on an old piano, it was a really bad piano. 6 strings broke while I was playing and the notes stopped making a sound but I powered on through until the end substituting notes lol. Usually old strings will break, with newer pianos it will be a string with a defect on it (a string is only as strong as its weakest point), it is actually pretty damn hard to break a new string unless you intentionally keep pounding the note and try to hit on its natural frequency and increase that until it breaks.

[minor9th]

Alexander Sultanov (R.I.P.) broke one during the Van Cliburn Competition. You can hear it snap on the CD that was issued from that competition (It's in "The Mephisto Waltz").

[peterjmathis]

Yeah, it's old strings that are more at risk for this.