You know you’re doing something right when you have regular audience members apologising to you for missing a concert. This is the enviable, if rather amusing, situation that Glynne Stackhouse finds himself in, as the chamber music series he took over almost 20 years ago enters its 24th season.

Concerts at St Peter’s now regularly attract capacity or near-capacity audiences, and Glynne is used to seeing the same faces appear time after time.

What’s his secret?

“The secret really — and I know this sounds a bit vain — is building up the trust,” he says. “People look at the programme and think, ‘I’ve never heard of that player’ or ‘I’ve never heard of that piece of music, but if it’s going on in St Peter’s it must be alright’. And you have to have that relationship. It takes a long time — this is our 24th season, and it wasn’t like this even halfway through that period.

“We’re very lucky in having St Peter’s church. It has very good acoustics, which goes a long way to making up for the fact that it hasn’t got any facilities! It doesn’t have a rest room, it doesn’t have any loos — fortunately, the Wallingford Baptist Church are very kind and we’re able to use theirs across the road. So we always have this phenomenon of musicians crossing the road at five minutes to eight, and then having to re-tune their instruments when they get into the church!

“But it works. And it’s a lovely venue. The people who come to play always enjoy it. They get a certain amount of resonance but no echo, and that helps the tone; they can hear what they’re doing.

“The other thing is the atmosphere that is created with the audience, which is immensely supportive and interested, and that helps the players to give their best. And that helps the audience to be supportive and interested, so it’s a positive spiral.”

The highlight of this year’s season is the Beethoven weekend of September 11 and 12, featuring the Sacconi String Quartet, who have built up a loyal following in Wallingford.

Three concerts over one weekend will see the Sacconis playing nine of Beethoven’s late quartets, and Glynne hopes to schedule a second weekend next year to complete the series.

“The late quartets are so profound and original, and every time you hear them there’s something new and different,” he says. “And different quartets get different things out of them. They’re often associated with well-established players bringing great maturity to them, but actually I think there’s a lot to be said for a younger group like the Sacconi exploring them as well, because they will bring a freshness and different insights. So I’m looking forward to that.”

Music at St Peter’s has long had a policy of encouraging young performers, and this year Glynne has invited pianist James Willshire and cellist James Barralet, both winners in the 2008 Philip and Dorothy Green Awards of Making Music. James Willshire will be appearing in a solo recital on August 8, before joining James Barralet two weeks later in what they both hope will mark the start of a professional duo.

An unusual programme on July 25 sees the Bozza Ensemble — a wind trio plus piano — performing music by Poulenc, Milhaud, Honegger, Auric, Durey and Tailleferre, a group of French composers known as Les Six. The idea for the evening came to Glynne after a chance discovery of a CD of Les Six in a shop in Italy.

Elsewhere in the season are concerts by the London Concertante (July 11) with pianist Nicola Elmer, in a programme of Schubert, Mussorgsky and Mozart, and the only vocal recital this year with mezzo Louise Winter (June 27), violinist Ruth Ehrlich and pianist Nancy Cooley performing Mozart’s concert aria Ch’io mi scordi di te, Haydn’s dramatic cantata Arianna a Naxos and other pieces by Schubert and Fauré, among others.

The season ends, as is now customary, with the Thames Consort, in a concert on September 26 to mark the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death.

Tickets are £10 in advance or £12 on the door, and are available from Just Trading of Wallingford, 80 High Street, Wallingford; by post from Diana Bradshaw, 14a Wood Street, Wallingford, Oxon OX10 0BD, or by phoning 01491 824792.