Making sweet music in the Cornish air

From next Sunday, world-class musicians will gather in a secluded villa on the Cornish cliffs to make music together. Petroc Trelawny visits Prussia Cove

In the eighteenth century, Prussia Cove was home to the "King of Prussia", the nickname of one John Carter, a hugely successful wrecker and smuggler. Now a rambling art nouveau house perches on the edge of the cliffs where Carter summonsed boats to their destruction. When I visited, a piano trio was rehearsing in the house's garden room, while upstairs a dozen people lounged around on sofas, listening to a performance of a Schubert string quintet. Outside, despite the driving Cornish wind, a small group struggled through a game of croquet.

Sándor Végh dreamt that his International Musicians' Seminar would offer chamber players the opportunity to work intensively together, free from external interruptions. The Hungarian violinist died five years ago, but the event he founded is still an essential part of the music calendar.

Every year, two seminars take place on this isolated stretch of the Cornish coastline. In the Spring, talented young soloists and chamber ensembles attend a series of master classes led by great musicians - this year the teachers include pianist András Schiff and cellist Boris Pergamenschikow. Then, in the autumn, some of those young players are invited back to join more experienced musicians on the chamber music course.

Upon arrival, democracy prevails; huge stars and unknown beginners are listed strictly in alphabetical order; trios, quartets, even octets are formed spontaneously, musicians rifle through tall piles of dusty scores searching for new repertoire.

The organisers of the IMS strive to keep its exact location a secret, lest anyone uninvited should turn up and threaten the sense of calm: "The principal focus here is thinking about and talking about and playing music," says the cellist, Steven Isserlis, a 16-year-old student when he first came here, and now artistic director of the event. Apart from the sea, little disturbs the creative process. "People see Prussia Cove as a refuge from the normal demands of the music business," says violinist Krysia Osostowicz, who has been coming for two decades. "I experience a completely different quality of concentration and freedom that I rarely have at home," she says.

The festival is now world-famous - as András Schiff proclaimed one year, "there's hardly a good chamber music group in the world that hasn't got one member who's been at the IMS." Japan, Russia, and America are all represented - but at the heart of Prussia Cove is the central European tradition of playing, epitomised by Sándor Végh. "Végh believed in music as a language," says Osostowicz, "not something people do simply to make a wonderful sound. He was able to express all kinds of extremes - not just about beauty, but about the darker side of existence as well."

The serious study is done by day, with up to 20 works being intensively rehearsed each week. Then, after dinner, the mood becomes more informal.

Impromptu quartets form to run through often obscure pieces, musicians play folk songs from their homelands. As the bar dispenses litres of red wine, and pint after pint of Hicks Special Draught, a glorious cacophony of sound reverberates through the corridors of the IMS's eccentrically designed home. Often a handful of people will still be playing at 3 a.m., everyone else having staggered back down the cliff path to find their beds in a series of old cottages clinging to the Atlantic cliffs.

No musician gets paid to come to the IMS - and the players' practical needs are looked after by a group of volunteers who cook, clean, supervise the music library and run a taxi service. They have to work five hours a day, the rest of the time they can sit in on classes and recitals.

It seems no one comes to Prussia Cove just once. Ashley Cooper, who runs the bar, came down with a friend he played with in an amateur orchestra. "He said you'll like it. That was 25 years ago and I've been here ever since."

One of the seminar's greatest achievements is the way it brings together players young and old. The veteran Hungarian violinist Lorand Fenyves will be leading a group of 20-somethings in masterclasses this month. Now in his eighties, he was appointed leader of the Israel Philharmonic in 1938: "We all learn from each other here", Fenyves says. "Sometimes I have to help, but often I think, 'how wonderful, I've never heard it like that before,' and then it's me who's learning."

For Clark, the IMS is about more than music alone. "It's about making new friends, talking about life. A lot of what we do is nothing to do with music at all - walking, enjoying the sea, having a holiday. We were all salsa dancing this morning until 4 a.m. You just make of it what you want. I love it."

•The 2002 IMS Spring Masterclasses will be from next Sunday until April 14th. Full details of public concerts, and how to apply for next year's masterclasses, at www.i-m-s.org.uk or from IMS Prussia Cove, 32 Grafton Square, London SW4 0DB