Look up the name John Lubbock on the Internet, and no fewer than three Sir John Lubbocks from past generations will appear. Then comes the present-day John Lubbock, founder and conductor of the Orchestra of St John’s, and long-time Oxfordshire resident.

“One of the Sir Johns, a great uncle, gets a mention every year because he invented Bank Holidays, so he’s a good egg,” his descendant explained. “Another wrote a splendid book called The Pleasures of Life.”

My last encounter with John Lubbock, the conductor, was in Oxford Town Hall, where he’d moved well away from his normal comfort zone of working with a carefully selected band of musicians — many of his OSJ players have been with him for 20 years or more, and he reckons it takes him only 20 seconds to decide whether a new player will fit in. But at the Town Hall, it was an entirely different kettle of fish: Bizet’s opera Carmen was being performed by a cast of hundreds, drawn from Oxford’s twin cities.

“I have to confess that it was my idea to do Carmen, in a moment of complete and utter madness!” John laughed. “We were going to stage it in the big hall at the BMW factory, as in — and this is the most pathetic pun — ‘car men’. We were planning to use some of the workers in the chorus, and replace horses and bulls with Minis. But sadly it didn’t quite fit in with BMW’s plans, so suddenly we had to change everything. We turned Escamillo the bullfighter into a pop star — wearing that rather cool gear, with wonderful scarlet leather trousers.”

For the past 11 years John Lubbock and the OSJ have staged an autumn festival in Dorchester Abbey called Music in the Abbey. One of the events has always been a come-and-sing session. This year it will feature Haydn’s Creation, which will also be performed by the OSJ and OSJ Voices on the last night of this year’s festival.

“I did one concert actually including the come-and-sing choir,” John explained. “But it all got slightly out of hand. We had about 180 singers, including a tenor who sounded as if was trying to find a lost sheep in the next valley — he drowned the entire choir. I thought, ‘I won’t do this again, it’s just too risky’.

“The Creation is unique to me in all the pieces I do. I was first asked to perform it in Madrid, when the Orchestra of St John’s was on tour. It was in the opera house — it was a really big date. I thought, ‘I don’t want to do The Creation, because I don’t like it. But I can’t refuse — it’s too prestigious a date’. At the end, I still didn’t like it. Then I was asked to do it again, and slowly during that performance the penny dropped. I don’t know why — you just hear the penny clunk. It’s almost the only piece that I’ve fought against, but it’s completely won me over.”

Talking to John in his Oxfordshire home, it becomes very apparent that he has to both love and fully understand the music he performs — obvious you might think, but there are plenty of conductors to whom the size of the cheque comes first.

“I can only think of one concert in my whole career that I wish I’d never done. It was Monteverdi’s Vespers, which I don’t understand. Somebody asked me to do it, and you have to take work. But I realised immediately I’d accepted that it was a huge mistake. I love to listen to that music, but I haven’t the faintest idea why it’s there, and how it works. At Dorchester, it’s a great luxury to be able to programme exactly what I want.”

Another luxury for John Lubbock is that Dorchester Abbey is a short distance from his home. Does that mean he is all the more sweetness and light as he arrives for rehearsal, not having had to get up at the crack of dawn, and hassle his way through airports?

“Absolutely. I stopped travelling so that I didn’t have to leave my autistic son, Alexander. Dorchester Abbey has turned out to be the loveliest place I ever play in. It’s got a wonderful spirituality to it — it’s not necessarily to do with God, but it seems to affect everybody, religious belief or no belief. It’s a win-win situation.”

  • Music in the Abbey runs from September 18 to 20. Details and tickets are available on 0845 6801926 or online at osj.org.uk