It is extraordinary how one can go on discovering strands of music-making in Oxford of whose existence one was unaware or only vaguely aware. The case in point is the series The OSJ Proms at the Ashmolean, now in its fourth year, held usually in the unlikely venue of the atrium of the Ashmolean Museum. In spite of the strange ambience of white walls and pillars surmounted by greater than life-size statues, this proves to have almost perfect acoustics for the performance of chamber music and small-scale ensembles. The audience space can accommodate just a hundred seated on chairs and thirty on cushions. Doors are open at 6.30pm with a start at 7.30, enabling the taking of refreshment in the nearby cafeteria beforehand. Thus the atmosphere is more redolent of Myra Hess’s wartime National Gallery concerts than of the Promenade Concerts at the Albert Hall. An additional feature is a five-minute discourse at the end of the interval.

The Orchestra of St John’s was founded by its present director John Lubbock, while still a student, in 1967 as OSJ Smith Square. It soon gained an international reputation which it has maintained. Though its activities are widespread, they have for many years now been centred on Dorchester Abbey in Oxfordshire. The orchestra’s ethos is to provide musical activities for the community, for example by specialising in concerts for the autistic through the charity Music for Autism, founded by Lubbock’s wife in 2002.

The concert I attended on 15 April contained five show-pieces by Purcell, JS Bach and Handel given by ten string players plus harpsichord and double-bass continuo – real ‘baroque rock’ – with young soloists and conductor. Before the interval we heard a Chaconne by Purcell introducing the conductor Karin Hendrickson who graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 2013, but who has already accumulated wide international experience. This was a meticulous performance, bringing out the full counterpoint of the variations on the basic ground – not the equal, but close to it, of the Bach for solo violin. The next item, a performance of Bach’s Cantata 51, Jauchzet Gott in Allen Landen, with soprano and trumpet obligato, was sensational! It is one of the most joyful works ever written. We have played a recording of this by Teresa Stich-Randall with Maurice André (trumpet) to see in the New Year every year since it was issued in the mid-sixties. That is, except for the two years we were in France, where we had to make do with a CD of Emma Kirkby with her characteristic beauty of sound but complete absence of emotion.

The soloists on this occasion were twenty-three-year-old Austrian soprano Christina Gansch, currently studying at the Royal Academy of Music, and trumpeter Darren Moore, also at RAM. The amazing thing was that it could have been a live performance by Stich-Randall with the same qualities of riding with apparent ease over the formidable difficulties of maintaining the line, both in the slow recitatives and in the florid opening ‘Aria’ and final ‘Alleluia’, which is further complicated by the excitement of the trumpet’s entries. After this, the second half of the concert could have been an anti-climax, but the level was maintained. Following a thumbnail history of the trumpet by Jon Whiteley, recently retired but with delivery skills in no way diminished, the second half opened with a Trumpet Sonata by Purcell, followed by an interesting transcription for string orchestra of Bach’s Concerto for Three Harpsichords – useful if the three instruments are not readily available but lacking the plangent keyboard sound to hold the attention. Finally, there was another sensational performance: Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim from Samson, sung by Gansch with trumpet joining in. This came over as a rehearsal for an eventual Last Night of the Proms, once the singer has fully developed her vocal power. I was immensely impressed.