Amateur or professional? That overworked distinction, of which the English have always made such heavy weather, ceases to exist when a group of musical friends get together to play great music for sheer enjoyment, as in the famous ‘Schubertiads’ of the 1820s.

But the only truly ‘amateur’ thing about Saturday’s concert at Trinity Church, Abingdon, was the passion and enthusiasm of the participants. The moving spirit, the violinist John Hounam, has a long professional career behind him; the pianist Roger Teichmann, is a distinguished composer as well as philosophy teacher at St Hilda’s; Roger’s wife, Sarah Lister (organ) is choir-mistress of Holy Trinity, Headington, and the Canadian soprano Patricia Hewes Corry, who sang her heart out in Bellini and Handel, teaches locally but has just returned from a 12-year stint on the operatic front line in Germany. Even the computer expert Anthony Wilkes just happens to have studied the cello at Trinity College, London, with Rohan de Saram.

The concert’s title, From Bach to Piazzolla and Back, reflected John Hounam’s love for the great master of Argentine tango. Framing a journey through some unfamiliar territory was unaccompanied Bach; for the cello (Prelude from Suite no. 1) played by Wilkes with suavity and elegance, and at the end a moving version of the Allemande from the second violin Partita (Hounam).

The first half was dominated, however, by three Bellini songs, whose ‘tricky simplicity’ was brilliantly mastered by Patricia Corry, with Teichmann gently adding the piano accents to her lovely line.

Roger Teichmann also distinguished himself by self-effacing, elegant playing in Haydn’s early Piano Trio in E Flat, though Hounam and Wilkes compensated with some gutsy attack in the folksy Polones. Hounam enjoyed himself with some outrageous rubato, in the Piazzolla Tango, and even more in a splendidly virtuoso rendering of the Delibes Sylvia pizzicato.

Most impressive of all, however, was the Kodaly violin and cello duo (first movement) in which Wilkes and Hounam showed, in this diabolically difficult music, what ‘amateur’ music making is really all about. It was rehearsed to perfection – professionals just haven’t the time.