Christmastide at St John the Evangelist, though you'd scarcely know it from the interior of the church, sans crib, sans star, sans tree or festive lights. When I enquired of the mince-pie seller at the bar why this might be, I was told: 'Oh, we never do'. So it was up to the five candelabra flanking the musicians to provide a spot of seasonal cheer, though even then I thought we could have done with a few more candles to enchant the eye. This seasonal concert from the Adderbury Ensemble has been going for a few years now and is set to become a fixture on the Oxford music scene, though I wonder whether SJE is quite the most appropriate venue for a small chamber band since to my eye they (never more than nine of them) were rather swallowed up in the capacious space 'twixt nave and chancel. Perhaps a college chapel might be more appropriately intimate. The programme featured popular chamber works - quasi greatest hits - and the question as the strings tuned up was whether, in the absence of novelty, the Adderburys would be able to inject new wine into old bottles. The answer was a resounding 'yes', with energy and sublety to spare.

We got going with G. F. Handel's 'The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba' from 1748. Sheba seems to have been the modern Yemen, and in the Old Testament's Book of Kings its queen travelled (probably on a trade mission) to the court of King Solomon in Jerusalem, "with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, and very much gold, and precious stones". It's an instrumental interlude in the oratorio Solomon. Leader Martyn Jackson took his players through the short piece rightly at a fair lick, conveying something of the excitement of the Queen's caravan entering Jerusalem to the wonder of the locals. Then we passed on to Corelli's Christmas Concerto, the original score which bears a note 'Fatto per la notte di Natale' (made for the night of Christmas). The half-dozen brief movements switch tempo on a sixpence. In the sonorous and gorgeous fourth section, which anticipates the intricately-layered Canon from Pachelbel to come, the players slowed before taking the 'pastorale' much more quickly.

Then on to two violin concertos from Antonio Vivaldi. In the first, 'For two violins in A minor', in the second movement there were moments when, in the absence of the bass, cello and harpsichord continuo, the music seemed to stagnate just a touch, the players a mite uneasy deprived of their rhythm section. We were back on track in the 'allegro' when suddenly disaster loomed and was sidestepped. Second soloist Jenny Sacha abruptly broke a string at a key moment; in the wink of a candle she and her neighbour Chris Windass acrobatically swapped instruments and Ms Sacha was fiddling away again, apparently unperturbed. She told me in the interval of her momentary panic and how this was the second time she'd broken a string in performance.

Also in the interval Simon Neal, personal assistant to Trevor Pinnock, was kind enough to show me the harpsichord being used for the continuo. This was a ravishingly-decorated instrument, modelled on a French 18th century original, with crimson lid, a gilt and ebony case and its soundboard richly decorated with roses and Rembrandt striped tulips. It was made by the American keyboard maker Keith Hill in 2010 in Nashville, Tennessee and it bears his company motto "KH: Opus me fecit" [KH made this work]. Such an instrument costs upwards of £25,000; truly an instrument for the personal use of the Margrave [ruler] of Brandenburg.

After the break, Vivaldi's 'Concerto in B minor for four violins', a rich and dense work packed with descending arpeggios and rondo-like rhythms. The soloists played first in unison, then peeled off their separate ways from the main line like the branches of the candelabra just at hand. The following 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring' was here arranged for strings; you can't go wrong with such a soaring melody, but the arrangement for organ and Leon Goossens' oboe remains in my mind as the pinnacle of the many versions. Then on to Pachelbel's 'Canon' which the programme notes reminded us is a chaconne (ie its bass theme is repetitively underlaid on the canon, itself a complex amalgam of melodies). Martyn Jackson led the way with these swirling patterns of music which twirled around us like a confection of candy floss. Bach's 'Brandenburg Concerto 3' was the super-vigorous finale. Non-Bachians will feel that here music meets mathematics, the structure of logic and geometric progressions to some extent displacing heart and emotion.