The past year I have listened to music, almost nonstop, on CD or on YouTube, rarely venturing out to hear it live. Unsurprisingly, I have been stunned yet again at how much more live music has affected me. Sunday’s concert of the Concord Chamber Music Society, brilliantly headed for 25 years by the venerable BSO violinist Wendy Putnam, had journeyed over the river and through the woods to the warm, curvaceous, and embracing Meadow Hall at Groton Hill’s gorgeous Music Center. It amply rewarded the nearly 40-mile trek, reminding me of the power of chamber music played live by excellent players.

For this carefully curated concert, Putman invited the Amerigo Trio (violinist Glenn Dicterow, violist Karen Dreyfus, and cellist Inbal Negev) to play Beethoven, Dvořák, and Brahms in company with herself and BSO violist Steven Ansell.

I had, of course, known of Glenn Dicterow as the longest lasting concertmaster (34 years!) of the New York Philharmonic, but had never heard him in chamber music, and it was quite a revelation. He is a very powerful player, and although he did not list his violin’s provenance, it was absolutely striking. My ear gravitated to him the entire concert. This is a musician and an instrument you want to hear live. Wow. Tasking first chair in each piece, he commanded in an authoritative and stately manner.

His excellent trio mates were violist Karen Dreyfus (also his wife) who, like Steven Ansell, studied at Curtis. Their cellist is Israeli-born Inbal Negev who, at age 16, was one of the very fortunate musicians chosen by Isaac Stern to study in the U.S. She has been a prolific and successful composer since the pandemic.

The trio gave a polished performance of Beethoven’s String Trio in C Minor, Op. 9, No.3, an intriguing staple of the string trio repertoire. People I spoke with in the balcony seemed to hear a rather different balance (between the instruments) than I did on the ground floor. I found this strange as I had always praised the acoustics in this near-perfect hall. C minor, of course, was a deeply meaningful key for Beethoven, saved for dramatic compositions, and already in this early work, he deploys it effectively and dramatically. As Lewis Lockwood writes in his Beethoven biography, “Mozart alone (in the realm of string trios) had wrought a masterpiece… Beethoven felt free (after writing his own string trios) for the rest of his career to move on to the higher ground of the string quartet.”

Dvořák’s unusually scored Terzetto for Two Violins and Viola, Op. 74 was a wonderful discovery―love at first hearing in the expert hands of the irresistible Dicterow, the powerful Putnam and the Dvořák stand-in Dreyfus (the Czech composer was a violist himself). Composed in one week in January 1887, this remarkably rich-sounding work could not be mistaken for any composer except for Dvořák, at his inimitable best.

“The Scherzo” (according to Steven Ledbetter’s fine program notes) “shows Dvořák’s love of the Czech furiant blended with Viennese waltz, with an enchanting Ländler for the trio section. The finale is an inventive set of ten variations; the theme’s minor mode at the onset makes for a surprisingly mournful tone, with even a quasi-operatic recitative, leading to dramatic climaxes and an outburst of rejoicing at the end.”

To close, the five musicians gave Brahms’s marvelous String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111 their all, projecting luxurious sound throughout. Steven Ansell’s many viola solos were just lovely. Brahms composed the quintet at the request of Joseph Joachim, for a companion piece to Brahms’s F Major Quintet, Op. 88. When he sent it to Clara Schumann, Brahms downplayed its importance, “I have always told you that the First (F major) Quintet is a really beautiful piece. For heaven’s sake don’t expect anything better or even equal to it!” Brahms had intended this to be his last composition, but luckily for clarinetists (and music lovers), Brahms heard the great clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld and was inspired to compose his Clarinet Quintet, Clarinet Trio, and two Clarinet Sonatas (often “borrowed” by violists).

Afterwards, the musicians reassembled on stage to field questions. One person asked did they remember their first favorite piece? Two chose piano quintets and Ansell without hesitation said, (Beethoven’s) Harp Quartet, 3rd movement.

So, do such luminaries ever experience feet of clay? I forget the question preceding Glenn Dicterow’s answer, but his reply made my day. It must have had to do with embarrassing moments and two musicians mentioned problems with scores on screens. Dicterow recalled stepping too hard on his foot mouse when all of a sudden his Amazon page showed up on his screen. He won the prizes for terrific playing and a chance to shop while performing. Putnam also remembered stepping too hard and the music going to the wrong page. Both admitted they simply had to fake the rest of the movement. I have no doubt they pulled off this feat/feet of impromptu recovery with aplombs and smarts.

Susan Miron is a book critic, essayist, and harpist. She writes about classical music and books for The Arts Fuse. Her last two CDs featured her transcriptions of keyboard music of Domenico Scarlatti.