June 2, as the world should know by now, was Elgar's birthday. The widespread celebrations of his 150th anniversary included Saturday's concert at St. Peter's, Wallingford, devoted entirely to his music. I wasn't going to miss this and neither, it turned out, were most of Wallingford; the church was packed.

The audience thronged, but St Peter's, charming though it is, hasn't space for a throng of performers. The evening concentrated on the three chamber works, Op. 82, 83 and 84, written almost simultaneously in 1918 and 1919. They were composed in Sussex, though I always hear in them the sound of the Severn, Elgar's river, a flowing, curling, deep-running background, not to be taken for granted, subject to sudden spurts and surges flooding the quiet country.

These were not, of course, his first chamber music; the Salut d'Amour and Chanson de Nuit, written decades earlier, are well-known and often performed. But these were his last major works. His beloved wife Alice died the following year and Elgar returned to to the West Country.

Wallingford's genius for talent-spotting had secured the Sacconi Quartet, formed in 2001, and pianist Gary Matthewman, all products of the Royal College of Music and all looking absurdly youthful despite their numerous awards. Their playing was, of course, splendid, sweeping through Elgar's impassioned passages and giving generous space to the separate lead themes. The three pieces, perhaps because they form a trilogy, share a similar pattern, with short melodic phrases or intervals developed and built up, sometimes to a full climax as in Op. 83 (Quartet) and Op. 82 (Sonata for violin and piano, with briliant performances by Ben Hancox and Matthewman), sometimes to a hushed close, seen especially in the opening two movements of Op.84 (Piano Quintet) - the second of these incidentally the only one in all three works marked Adagio, though the Piacevole of the sonata comes near it.

Does chamber work show Elgar at this best? I'm not convinced. The little phrases are repeated too often, but not sustained, and seem to need the full weight of the orchestra. It was time to go home to Malvern.