EXCITEMENT is building around the next Lakeland Sinfonia concert.

Hardly surprising, as centre stage will be Pascal Rogé, regarded by many as one of - if not thee - greatest French pianists on the international stage, who has performed in almost every major concert hall in the world and with most major orchestras.

As well as his virtuosity, his playing is characterised by elegance, beauty and stylistically perfect phrasing.

Pascal shares the Kendal Leisure Centre Westmorland Hall stage as soloist with the Lakeland Sinfonia on Saturday, February 3, a highly anticipated performance which should have the audience hanging on to every note.

Born in Paris in 1951, Pascal was a student of the Paris Conservatory and mentored by Julius Katchen and the great Nadia Boulanger.

Winner of the Georges Enesco piano competition and first prize of Marguerite Long Piano competition, he became a Decca recording artist when he was 17.

Pascal has also been busy recording and giving recitals around the world with his wife Ami Rogé focusing on the French repertoire of music for two pianos. They commissioned a new Concerto for Two Pianos by Matthew Hindson, which was premiered in Sydney in 2011.

He is also dedicated to teaching and gives regular masterclasses worldwide. He has won many prestigious awards such as the Gramophone Awards, the Grand Prix du Disque, and the Edison Award for his CD of the popular concerto by Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns No 2 in G minor, which he performs with Lakeland Sinfonia in the February 3 programme.

Composed in 1868 and dedicated to Madame A de Villers, Saint-Saëns himself was the soloist at the concerto's premiere with Anton Rubenstein conducting. Saint-Saëns apparently wrote the piece in three weeks. He had very little time to prepare for its first performance and it wasn't as well received as expected.

These days though, its become the most popular of the French composer's five concertos.

It is a sparkling, virtuosic work, beginning with a long improvisational introduction in the style of a Bach fantasia and finishing with an extremely fast, fiery tarantella, and a whirlwind of arpeggios.

The Lakeland Sinfonia concert - the fifth one of eight in the Lakeland Sinfonia Concert Society series - will be conducted by the New Zealander Michael Joel. After plenty of experience on his home turf, he became a staff conductor at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, working on such blockbusters as La Boheme, Tosca and Carmen. He often pops back to his homeland and has had rave reviews for his performance of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.

Michael opens the sinfonia concert with Diversions by one of New Zealand’s finest composers, Douglas Lilburn, whose music fuses European traditions with inspirations from the literature, landscape, and the culture of his native country.

Faure's popular Pavane also features in the sinfonia programme and Beethoven’s Symphony No 1 brings the concert to an energetic close.

Elsewhere in the concert society's season are the Hallé performing under the baton of Jonathon Heyward on Saturday, March 3, featuring horn player Laurence Rogers; pianist Lars Vogt directs the Royal Northern Sinfonia on Saturday, March 17; and the BBC Philharmonic brings the curtain down on another LSCS season on Saturday, April 28 with conductor Duncan Ward on the podium and cellist Leonard Elschenbroich in the soloist spotlight.

Performances start at 7.30pm.

For tickets book online at www.lakelandsinfonia.org.uk or by telephone on 0333-666-3366.