---
title: "Ray Chen’s E string snapped at the Royal Albert Hall and a violinist re-strung it in his seat mid-concerto"
url: https://badiyaa.com/ray-chen-e-string-royal-albert-hall-tamas-andras/
published: 2026-11-08T10:33:00+00:00
modified: 2026-11-08T10:33:00+00:00
section: Offbeat
publisher: Badiyaa
---

# Ray Chen’s E string snapped at the Royal Albert Hall and a violinist re-strung it in his seat mid-concerto

Tamás András of the Royal Philharmonic took a new string from Chen and fitted it in his chair during Korngold's concerto, a May moment now circulating online again.

Tamás András re-strung a soloist’s violin from his own chair, in the middle of a concerto, at the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra says he kept up the page turns for his desk while he did it.

The soloist was [Ray Chen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Chen), the Taiwanese-Australian star who won the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 2009. The night was May 12, 2026. The clip is having a second life this weekend, climbing a big online forum under a caption that says the repair and tuning took less than one minute.

That stopwatch figure belongs to the caption. The orchestra’s own account does not give a time, and we could not confirm one. The swap itself is documented in the orchestra’s write-up of the evening.

## How the relay worked

Chen’s E string, the thinnest and highest of the four, snapped partway through [Korngold’s Violin Concerto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violin_Concerto_(Korngold)). A soloist cannot stop and wait, so the instruments moved instead.

- The damaged violin traveled back through the orchestra’s Leader, Duncan Riddell.

- It reached András, in the first violins, who took a fresh string that Chen himself handed over.

- András fitted it where he sat, and tuned it up while the music carried on around him.

- Chen finished the passage on a borrowed instrument and took his own back later.

According to a report from the hall, the violin Chen borrowed was András’s, the break came in the third movement, and the switch back happened during a stretch where the orchestra plays without the soloist, just before his next entry. The orchestra’s account says only that the string went “halfway through the concerto.”

If the report is right about the movement, the timing was brutal. Korngold’s finale is the hardest part of the piece for the soloist, built on a fast jig that climbs to a showpiece ending. Jascha Heifetz gave the premiere in St. Louis on February 15, 1947, and the writing has not gotten any kinder since.

## Why the tuning is the hard part

A new string is only useful once it sounds the right note, and that chair was no quiet room. Here is the arithmetic behind tuning a violin by ear. Neighboring violin strings sit a [perfect fifth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_fifth) apart, a 3:2 ratio in frequency. Take the A string at the [440 Hz standard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard)) widely used as concert pitch in the UK: 440 × 3 ÷ 2 = 660 Hz for the E above it.

So the job is to pluck two strings together and turn the peg until the pair stops sounding sour, with a full symphony orchestra playing a few feet away. Commenters who play pointed out that a fresh string keeps stretching and drifting for a while after it goes on. One audience message on the orchestra’s page says Chen “casually tuned the E string while playing,” so the final adjustment may have been his.

Scale matters too. A typical performance of this concerto runs about 25 minutes, so a one-minute repair, if the caption is accurate, would be 1 ÷ 25, or 4% of the work. A soloist would have a hard time hiding a gap that long. Chen did not have to, because the borrowed violin kept the line going.

## The reaction

The orchestra published audience messages from the night, and they read like a motor-racing crowd. “Fastest string change in the history of humanity lol,” one wrote. Another offered “Orchestra pit crew.” On the forum this weekend, an early reply made the same joke: “An Orchestral Pit Stop.”

Chen has built a following well beyond concert halls, with comedy videos on YouTube and a long run of loaned Stradivarius violins, so a clip like this travels quickly. Mahler’s Fifth Symphony followed in the second half. The orchestra’s round-up saved its shortest verdict for the man in the chair: “Bravo Tamás!”

## Further reading

- [Wikipedia: Ray Chen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Chen)

- [Wikipedia: Violin Concerto (Korngold)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violin_Concerto_(Korngold))

- [Wikipedia: A440 (pitch standard)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440_(pitch_standard))

*Image: The wub, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons*

*This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*