Perhaps we should ask the thousands of concert goers who attend the festivals and concerts there every year.

In investigating an upcoming festival in Northern Ireland, I uncovered another architectural delight, which will be home to a host of music makers and music lovers from 19 - 25 August, that is the Clandeboye Estate in Bangor, Co Down.

Now in its fifth year, the Clandeboye festival has become an important occasion for young musicians north and south of the border, encompassing as it does, masterclasses and workshops with five prominent soloists of international stature. The week is hinged on an undeniably important competitive element, the prize of the title of Clandeboye Young Musician, which not only rewards the winner with a performance in the festival finale concert but with several concert engagements with Camerata Ireland, which is in residence at Clandeboye for the duration of the festival. The winners of that prestigious title for the last three years, flautist, Eimear McGowan, violinist, Lynda O' Connor and pianist Michael McHale will feature this year in various different guises throughout the festival. Indeed, it is the 2006 recipient, Eimear McGowan, who opens the festival proceedings on 19 August with a programme of solo and chamber music.

According to the array of students who are carefully selected each year to participate in the programme, the teaching faculty has varied over the years.

On this occasion, founder and director of the festival and of Camerata Ireland, pianist Barry Douglas will divide his time between giving masterclasses and an eagerly anticipated solo recital on 22 August .

Other teacher/performers include the inimitable Korean violinist, Chee Yun, now based in the US, where she has enjoyed the larger part of her success as a soloist. Indeed, it was she, in the company of Barry Douglas, who gave the US premiere of Penderecki's Sonata No 2, a composer whose second violin concerto she has also championed, both in the recording studio and onstage in a three-continent tour with the composer conducting. Her talents will be heard at Clandeboye through the medium of Bach's double violin concerto, with Lynda O'Connor (20 August) the Trout quintet (21 August) and in the finale concert of the festival, the Beethoven triple concerto with Barry Douglas and Chilean cellist, Andres Diaz, himself a regular teacher at Clandeboye and a terrifically exciting and renowned soloist.

French clarinetist, Michel Lethiec and UK horn player, Richard Watkins complete the faculty list for the week's masterclasses and both will join Finghin Collins for an evening of chamber music on 21 August to include the horn sonata and clarinet trio (with Diaz on cello) of Beethoven.

Of specific interest to entrepreneurs and musicians alike will be the Q&A session scheduled for the morning of 25 August, which is free of charge, where members of the public can direct any burning questions they like to the students, guest artists and managers. Douglas initially conceived the festival as a precursor to the professional scene for the young musicians of the festival, so this session ties in well with the spirit of the programme. How to make friends and influence people in the music business? How to get to Carnegie Hall? Ask the experts.