What happens when you put an energetic, all-30-something group like Manhattan Chamber Players almost close enough for audiences to touch, then have them play a Mozart string duo, a Debussy string quartet and a Dvorak piano quintet with Grand Piano Series artistic director Milana Strezeva herself on the keys?

Pure magic.

Strezeva — graduate of the famed Juilliard School, concert pianist and founding member of the award-winning Manhattan Piano Trio — has electrified this season’s audiences by stirring cutting-edge young ensembles into the piano series’ programming mix.

She explained her love of the format: “Chamber music has been part of my life since I was born. My mom was an opera singer, and my dad was a principal clarinet player at the Moldova National Opera and Ballet. We started performing together when I was 11 years old.

“It’s so important in any great chamber music collaboration to have teamwork and respect for one another. Not only do you have amazing players, you have to trust one another deeply. You have to be present in the moment and listen to one another. That’s what makes the magic happen.”

Before Luke Fleming started MCP in 2015, he had for six years been violist in a string quartet.

“It’s a natural format for drawing an audience in,” he said. “People can sit right up close to the action, which has an intimacy unlike an orchestra, and see the communication among the players on stage. Chamber music is such a human activity of communication, cooperation and compromise.”

Inspired by that democratic vision, but yearning for something different from the cemented marriage that is an established chamber group, Fleming created a groundbreaking new collective.

MCP’s fluid ensemble draws on a corps of 20 musicians representing violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano, clarinet, oboe, horn, flute and harp. It can present anything from a trio to a 13-player unconducted performance of Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.”

Former students of the Curtis Institute, Juilliard School, Colburn School, New England Conservatory and Yale School of Music, MCP members share a New York base and a desire to perform together as often as they can, in groups tailored for practically anything in the chamber repertoire. Members intentionally vary from performance to performance.