Pinchas Zukerman brims with enthusiasm about all matters related to music

At 77, Pinchas Zukerman acknowledges that he’s closer to the end of his career than the beginning. But the Israeli-born violinist and violist still overflows with enthusiasm during an interview that was supposed to be about his upcoming Zukerman Trio concert at Symphony Center, but veered off in many other directions.

“I’m 77, and I pick up the damn fiddle every day, and it’s like I’ve never seen it before,“ Zukerman says amiably. ”But I’ll keep playing. As long as I can play in tune, I’ll play. And if I can’t play in tune, Amanda will tell me.”

Cellist Amanda Forsyth, Zukerman’s wife and frequent collaborator, also will be on the SCP Chamber Music program March 7, along with pianist Michael Stephen Brown, featuring music by Higdon, Mendelssohn and Dvorak.

What’s it like to rehearse with your spouse? “It’s not husband and wife, it’s two instrumentalists with great respect for each other,” he says. “She’ll say, ‘Why is that note so long?’ and I’ll say, ‘I like it that way,’ and she’ll say, ‘It’s wrong.’ We know each other’s habits, so maybe we’re a little more familiar. I hear the music coming at me, and I give it right back, and it’s spectacular.”

In rehearsal, “You can’t be sugary. Honey, sweetie — we don’t talk like that. But it’s not offensive when musicians talk honestly.”

Artistic personalities may clash, of course, and he has heard the clashes in performance, but he says, “Music is bigger than all of us. Most of the time, if we are honest with ourselves, it will show up in the ears and the heart of the listener.”

The trio’s performance at Symphony Center will feature one movement of a work by Jennifer Higdon, and Zukerman speaks highly of her and of contemporary composers in general. Most, he says, are willing to listen to the input of performers and make changes accordingly. How does he balance the classics with new work? “I don’t have a formula. I should, but I don’t.”

Amanda Forsyth, the daughter of Canadian composer Malcolm Forsyth, has often performed the cello concerto that her father wrote for her. And Brown, the trio’s pianist, is also a composer in his own right.

Chamber music ensembles come in dozens of different combinations, but the trio of piano, violin and cello is probably second in popularity, only to the string quartet. “Quartets are an incredible educational experience,” Zukerman says. “The four independent voices give you something that even the Beethoven violin concerto doesn’t.”

But two strings and a piano is a different experience, he says. “The piano is the one instrument that’s complete,” he said. “It can do the second violin with one finger. It fills in the extra salt or pepper or garlic that the piece needs.”

The sound of three instruments can fill the large space of Symphony Center, but Zukerman thinks it takes a slightly different approach than it would in a smaller hall. “It’s not difficult to play loud,” he says. “You play to the exit signs.”

Zukerman jumps from topic to topic in conversation, commenting on the difficulty of recording live concerts, the influx of Asian talent to American orchestras, and the need for piano teachers to stress collaboration.

He also speaks fondly of his history with the Chicago Symphony (“a great orchestra”) going back to 1966. "And maybe because of the education they have in the Midwest,” he says. The audiences in Chicago, he points out.