English country-house festivals - Grange Park and Garsington being the current artistic successes, with Glyndebourne as their fountainhead and Glastonbury their obverse - have been flourishing this summer despite the rain. Their Scottish equivalents, with the notable exception of Paxton House in Berwickshire, however, continue their decline.

In England it is opera - Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at Garsington, Verdi's Falstaff at Grange Park - that does the trick, and to hell, it seems, with the expense. Since Scotland has no shortage of country houses, it is tantalising to read of these productions, with their outstanding casts, at a time when our national opera company continues to be cut to the bone. But then, as has often been said, Scottish and opera are a contradiction in terms. Yet there is more to it than that. Much depends on initiative. It was in Scotland half a century ago that country-house music had one of its first triumphs, thanks to the publisher John Calder's creation of Ledlanet Nights in a Victorian mansion he had inherited in Kinross-shire. The building was reputedly haunted, which made it the perfect place for the Scottish premiere of Britten's Turn of the Screw, staged above and below the main staircase. Mozart's Clemenza di Tito and Il Re Pastore were also presented, along with Handel's Partenope and Agrippina, Soler's Una Cosa Rara and Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, at a time when these works were - some still are - real rarities in Britain.

James Loughran and Roderick Brydon conducted Ledlanet concerts, and Leonard Friedman's Scottish Baroque Ensemble spent its summers there. Thomas Hemsley, singing Schubert song cycles in costume, impersonated the composer. Supper was served in a marquee, and booze in a bar lined with meshed bookcases to prevent thefts from Calder's precious library. But, in the end the premises were closed, the cramped auditorium (perilously assembled on tubular scaffolding) having been reported as a fire risk.

By then, other Scottish country houses were running festivals. Hopetoun House staged Handel in South Queensferry. Fife proved fertile soil for baroque concerti grossi and the Borders for songs and brass quintets. As a mobile music critic, I heard the Diabelli Variations - not Beethoven's but the less famous ones that Anton Diabelli had privately commissioned from Czerny, Schubert, the 11-year-old Liszt and many others - in an isolated house between Blairgowrie and the Devil's Elbow. There were good recitals at Pollok House on the outskirts of Glasgow, and a bad piano in East Lothian, where Yonty Solomon refused to give an encore, explaining he would not remain in the building a moment longer than he had to.

Gradually enthusiasm declined, though the long-established Haddo House Choral Society in Aberdeenshire has determinedly sustained its combination of opera and oratorio. Gian Carlo Menotti's plans for music at Yester House, his Scottish residence in Gifford, came to nothing - he was too busy running the Spoleto Festival and Rome Opera - which has made the recent rise of the Paxton House Festival beyond the Lammermuirs all the more welcome.

Far from being opportunistic, it has proved a source of serious music-making in a handsome Palladian villa. Opera, it's true, lies outside its range of activities, at least for the moment. But its concerts - bearing in mind Britten's dictum that all good concerts are worth a journey to a special place - offer an enticing range of chamber music from admirable performers in apt surroundings.

Among the first to recognise Paxton's possibilities was the Glasgow-based pianist Gusztav Fenyo, who was back there last month for a weekend of late Beethoven. Forsaking a sodden Edinburgh for the last of these recitals, I arrived beneath blue skies in time for a glass of wine in the grounds and a meal before the brusquerie of the Diabelli Variations. Ahead, from July 20, lies the main festival, nine concerts in nine days, featuring the Hebrides Ensemble, the Primrose Piano Quartet, the Edinburgh Quartet with John Cushing of the RSNO playing Brahms's Clarinet Quintet, the virtuoso guitarist Simon Thacker and soprano Claire Debono, and performers from the RSAMD, St Mary's Music School and the Sage in Gateshead.

The programmes include works by Faure, Debussy, Ravel, Franck and the dapper Jean Francaix alongside German classics and Britten's teacher, Frank Bridge. Not since Ledlanet Nights has Scotland sported a rustic festival as promising as this. The Paxton House Festival runs from July 20-29. For tickets and information, call 01289 386291.