A special group of Irish musicians aims to inject fun into performances - as well as give young people great opportunities, writes Arminta Wallace

The Queen, the President, the wine bar in Belfast and the Irish Financial Services Centre - it sounds like the title of a Peter Greenaway movie. But these are all elements of the real-life Camerata Ireland story - so if you want to get up to speed with the plot, listen up.

Once upon a time (actually, well under a decade ago), a bunch of musicians from the Ulster Orchestra sat in a wine bar in Belfast with the pianist Barry Douglas. They weren't just milling into Chardonnay and cappuccino: they were mulling over the idea of putting together a chamber orchestra for a one-off corporate event. "In the end," says Douglas, "that event didn't happen. But I remembered meeting Irish musicians all around the UK, and they seemed so, sort of, isolated. Along came this idea - why don't we get together for a couple of music events a year? Then it snowballed."

Out of the woodwork popped a plethora of young Irish musicians - especially string players - who were either studying or had just finished college. "We wanted to bring them together and say: 'Look at them all together. They're incredible'."

Hang on a second, though. Is this an adventure movie, or an animated fantasy? In real life aren't orchestras between a rock and a hard place, with music institutions strapped for funding and audience figures giving cause for concern? How can you just start up a new orchestra and go from strength to strength? By a combination of charm and cheek, appears to be Douglas's answer.

But hard graft is part of the answer, too, which is where the IFSC comes in. It's an unusual venue, to say the least, for an interview with a classical musician. Bright and early this morning, however, Douglas has been speaking to the folks at Accenture and they, it seems, have been listening with interest, putting in place sponsorship for a bursary that will help further the studies of Camerata Ireland's Young Musician of the Year for 2004: the pianist Michael McHale.

And so the adventure continues. "Our first tour in the US was a great success," says Douglas. "And this year we've been to Paris, Munich, Warsaw, Italy . . ." He rubs his eyes. "Where else have we been?" China, I offer. "China. Yes. Thank you. Then we have our summer festival at Clandeboye, which is basically a type of mini-Tanglewood. An Irish Tanglewood, where young musicians play with established names. I want to expand that."

And where do the Queen and the President come in? "We persuaded the President of Ireland and Her Majesty the Queen to be joint patrons of Camerata Ireland last February," says Douglas, with an unabashed grin. "Since then, we've made a lot of new friends - not just in the sense of financial support, which is vital as we don't receive any State funding - but in the sense of believing in our cause." Which is? "Basically, to help increase awareness of what music is. I mean, I don't work in charity, I don't work in visual arts - my thing is music. So that's what I'm going to bang my drum about."

Douglas's drum has proven to be remarkably eloquent. He is one of Ireland's better-known musical exports, and yet his press biography is striking for its insistence on giving detailed credit to his teachers. Soloists, it implies, don't spring fully-formed from the musical ether. Years of collaboration, of exchanging ideas with more experienced musicians, play a vital part.

At the age of 16, Douglas had a summer of lessons with a woman who had been a pupil of Liszt. "I found out by chance that she was visiting her sister in Belfast," he says. "She had a vision, almost a philosophy, about sound that made a huge impression on me."

Another teacher had been a pupil of Schnabel. "She had been living in Holland during the war. Her husband was a Jew hiding out from the Nazis. Then she got TB, and her career finished, but as a result she spent many years lying in a hospital thinking about technique, and she could articulate her ideas brilliantly. She'd say: 'Use this muscle and that melody will sing.' She had it down like that."

When you're at an impressionable age, Douglas argues, even one lesson can make an indelible impression. "I had a lesson with Alfred Brendel once, and he amazed me. His persona on stage is so stern, but talking about music he was like a kid in a candy store. I played the Schumann Fantasy to him, and I played it correctly and well. And he said: 'Yes, you played it correctly and well.' But then he sat down. And with the passion of, I don't know, a thousand people in love or something - it was just crazy - he made me understand that if you don't go for the music, if you don't perform it like this, you might as well not bother."

As well as allowing him to exercise his conducting muscles, the Clandeboye Festival gives Douglas the opportunity to pass the torch of pianism to a younger generation. It's not a competition as such, but for the person who emerges from its programme of masterclasses, open rehearsals and concert performances as the Young Musician of the Year, the potential is obvious.

"The idea of the concert at the National Concert Hall in Dublin is to give Irish audiences a chance to see what we're all about - and to applaud Michael McHale, who won the award last August," says Douglas. "This is what it's all about. A young musician poised on the brink of a career; a real performance opportunity in a major venue." So, no pressure, then? As it turns out, McHale, a young pianist from Belfast, is as cool as a cucumber about the prospect of playing Mozart's effervescent Concerto for Two Pianos - written by the 23-year-old composer for himself and his sister - with Douglas and Camerata Ireland on the night of Mozart's birthday.

By a quirk of musical fate, he has already performed it from the other side of the tracks as a one-time cellist with the Ulster Youth Orchestra.

"It's the kind of piece where one piano plays a phrase and the other copies it, or changes it slightly," he says. "So it will be important to inject a sense of fun into the performance - and of course, it makes it much easier if you can bounce off someone else."

For his part, Douglas observes that "two pianists playing together - either on one piano or two - is incredibly difficult. You're talking about two percussion instruments which have to be absolutely synchronised. Plus, you have to make music. Bringing two disparate people together in that way is a scary situation."

Are they, then, very different pianists? "Obviously," says McHale, "Barry's big specialty to date has been the romantic repertoire, while I've focused mostly on Beethoven and the classics. The thing about Mozart is that the textures are very light, clear, and crisp. Where there are lots of running semiquavers, you want to provide as much variation of tone as possible without it sounding too romantic. I've always been very interested in how Barry changes his style when he plays Mozart, so hopefully I'll get some advice on that."

McHale is scheduled to play Beethoven's third piano concerto with the Ulster Orchestra in a live BBC broadcast in April; he will also play Dvorak and Beethoven trios at this year's West Cork Chamber Music Festival.

As for Camerata Ireland, Douglas is still full of plans for the group's future. Next year will see the introduction of a composition masterclass at Clandeboye. And at the other end of the musical scale, he is keen to establish a countrywide network of links with schools. On the morning of the Dublin concert, close to 100 schoolchildren will converge on the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre for an open rehearsal that will, Douglas hopes, be instructive as well as fun - for musicians and audience alike.

"Will it increase audiences?" he asks, addressing himself as much as anyone. "I don't know." But education, he's sure, is where the future of music is at. "And it's getting harder to compete, with multimedia, the Internet and so on. Investment in musiceducation has gone down in recent years - certainly, the school of music in Belfast has had a lot of problems - and there's a lot of money wasted that could be spent on cultural projects. Culture has to be at the centre of society or it doesn't mean anything. And", he adds, with a defiant nod and a beatific smile, "I'm doing my bit."

Camerata Ireland performs Mozart's Concerto for Two Pianos with Barry Douglas and Michael McHale, soloists, and Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony at the National Concert Hall on January 27th