Chamber Music: For the Joy of It

"What this country needs," Conductor Fritz Reiner once observed, "is more lousy string quartets." It is not for lack of trying. Indeed, the compulsion of amateur musicians to get together for an evening of chamber music is all but irrepressible. An Army officer's wife one day was approached by a stranger who noticed a telltale mark on her neck: "You must play the violin. Would you like to join our group?" A Boston doctor, hearing a man whistling a Mozart theme on the street, whistled back and soon had a date for duets....