No matter how old I get, live music still astonishes me. Chamber music simply can’t be recorded. Wonderful efforts exist, of course, and one can’t always have musicians on hand, but the depth and richness of the sounds from instruments played a few feet away, compared to a recording, are like a galaxy in the heavens compared to a greeting card with glitter. The Duxbury Music Festival, Stephen Deitz, Director, continues apace through the end of this week, with plenty of music still to be heard. Thursday, July 26 at 4 p.m. and again at 5:30 p.m. you can hear student recitals at the Village at Duxbury (Kings Town Way, Route 53 near the Kingston line). The recitals are free. The Festival’s final event is the next night, Friday, July 27 at 7 p.m.: the Winners Concert and farewell reception at the Ellison Center, St. George Street (near the school complex). The Winners Concert costs $40. Be early.

I missed the first part of the Sunday in the Park free concert on the Town Green – my lawnmower required special attention – but the second half was stunning. Stephen Deitz explained that the musicians playing in the various ensembles had worked together for only a few days. They know the pieces they’ll be playing ahead of time, but they “develop a shared vision for the pieces” in what amounts to a few hours playing together, with only two coaching sessions.

    The audience, however, heard split-second swells, diminuendos fading to sweet silence, and brilliant harmonies coming out of nowhere, or rather everywhere. Composers and arrangers deserve some of that credit, but none of it happens without the performers in action together. All of the pieces I heard were challenging, sometimes stretching the ear with contemporary cadences and harmonies rooted in dissonance more than sweet harmony.

    Carol Anne Bosco, from the D.C. area, arrested my attention with Cassadó’s Fantasia, Suite for Solo Cello. Tuning for the piece was an exercise in perfection – then I found out why. Nothing demands perfect tuning like a work with shocking dissonance. Bold and wild, the piece dives and swirls with abandon, nearly violent, and that’s the way Carol Anne played. I asked her why she picked it.

    “It’s cool!” she said. She added elemental color to her words, and added, “I wanted to work on my courage in performance, and this was the perfect piece for it.”

    Nathaniel Wolkstein from Madison, Wis., played Elgar’s Salut d’Amour with such sweet beauty that I wrote “ecstasy” on my program. I was struck that a young man could play his violin with such a voice, obviously delighted with Elgar’s sentiment and sweetness. We chuckled that we were both “sappy enough” to appreciate Elgar, the man who also wrote “Pomp and Circumstance.”

    Marianna Cutright (violin), Justin Page (cello), and Sharon Chi (piano) sparkled with an early Bernstein piece that featured blistering little arpeggios, glittering harmonies, and echoes of Bernstein’s musical soul. Stephen Deitz described the piece as Bernstein at Harvard, not the Bernstein of Candide and West Side Story, but I could see a bit of Gene Kelly dancing in “On the Town,” or the sailors in 1944’s Leonard Bernstein-Jerome Kern ballet, “Fancy Free.”

    Live chamber music brings into the musical experience words that seen alien to the setting: attack, voice, violent abandon, and courage. Seeing music performed up close brings such words to life. One sits next to – or within – the constellation of physical efforts, attention, attractions, and sheer power that it takes to make the music. One hears ensembles – cello, viola, and violin, for example – play as if they formed a single instrument, seamlessly carrying musical figures across the group from cello to violin. One sees and hears the crooning of notes squeezed from wood, strings, and bows, their voices changed in mid note as if to emphasize a point. One sees the glances and dances of musicians shaping together their shared visions, as if they could touch each other with their eyes, or their hearts.

Don’t miss their last performances. Let them touch you as well.