Dating back to 1902, the Oxford Symphony Orchestra is one of the city’s more venerable institutions. Formed originally to accompany the Bach Choir, the orchestra has long since ploughed its own furrow as a large-scale amateur group, working under a professional conductor. Currently wielding the baton is Robert Max, who combines conducting with a career as a solo cellist. I asked him how his partnership with the OSO began.

“I answered an advertisement, and there was a selection procedure. I was asked to conduct the orchestra: it was Mahler’s First Symphony, which they knew better than I did. So they certainly tested me out.”

The OSO has just announced its programme for the 2009/10 season, kicking off with Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra – a blaze of sound implanted in the memory of millions as the theme music to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Looking down the list of concerts in the company of Robert Max, and the orchestra’s chairman, Caroline Johnson, it certainly didn’t look as if the OSO always goes for the easy options.

“We have Robert to thank for that!” Caroline laughed. “During his time with us, we’ve played challenging and unusual pieces.

“But I think one of the great things is that all of us in the orchestra have been achieving more than we ever thought we could. That’s enormously rewarding to the players, and I think that sort of enthusiasm transmits itself to the audience. More people are coming to our concerts, and I think they really enjoy them.”

The first concert also includes Brahms’s Double Concerto for Violin and Cello. The soloists will be Tamsin Waley-Cohen and Gemma Rosefield, who both appear as part of the orchestra’s Young Artists Partnership Scheme. This new initiative helps young musicians develop their solo careers, and more established players to extend their repertoire: the now internationally famous cellist Natalie Clein, for instance.

“Having played Bloch’s Schelomo with us in 2007, she’s coming back this year to do Prokofiev’s Sinfonia Concertante,” Robert explained. “It’s a summit of the solo cello repertoire, an unbelievably long, complicated, and difficult piece – I’ve played it and taught it. She called me and said: ‘I’d really like to learn it, do you think we could do it in Oxford?’”

I wondered whether choice of repertoire was an easy matter, or whether chairman and conductor needed to engage in “energetic discussions” on the subject.

“There are fairly energetic discussions,” Caroline replied, with all the discretion you might expect from a recently retired partner in a firm of solicitors.

“But we put a lot of faith in Robert’s perception of what will make a good concert programme, and what he feels is going to stimulate the orchestra. A lot of orchestra members say what they would like to play as well. We have good discussions, but no rows!”

One of the main differences between amateur and professional orchestras is the length of time spent in rehearsal. For Robert Max, rehearsals are one of the joys of the job.

“We have eight weeks’ rehearsal before each concert, so you spend much, much more time rehearsing than giving the actual concert, unlike a professional orchestra where rehearsal time is very limited. So the rehearsals have to be as interesting, and captivating as the performing experience.

‘One of the highlights I remember was when we were rehearsing Mahler’s Seventh Symphony a couple of years ago. There’s this very fluid rubato section in the first movement: we’d done it a few times before, and it had been a bit of a dog’s dinner. But on this occasion everybody was feeling the same way, and it was absolutely wonderful. It just couldn’t have been better. The fact that it was in a rehearsal was equally exciting for me as it would have been in a performance – having said that, we’ve pulled all sorts of cats out of bags in performances as well!”

Chairman Caroline Johnson was very keen to stress that OSO concerts are welcoming, not elitist, occasions. So it’s perhaps not surprising that the greatest reward for her is to look at the audience at the end of a concert.

“When you’re acknowledging the applause, and can see the audience all smiling at you, it’s a wonderful moment that’s renewed at every concert. The harder the piece, and the nearer the edge you were, the better it is!”

n Full details of the Oxford Symphony Orchestra’s 2009/10 season are available on www.oxfordsymphonyorchestra.org Booking telephone no: 01865 305305