A PIANIST renowned for his Beethoven interpretations will perform with the Lakeland Sinfonia on Saturday, December 15.

Beethoven's Emperor concerto, the fifth and last of his piano concertos, will be the main work at the concert at Kendal Leisure Centre, conducted by Wyn Davies.

Renowned soloist Llyr Williams has performed the complete cycle of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas on several occasions, most recently at the Wigmore Hall in London. Recordings of that last cycle have appeared as a 10-CD set from Signum Classics to critical acclaim.

The concert will start with the popular overture to Mozart’s opera Idomeneo, and the second half will feature a string of well-known favourites.

Handel's The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba is a sinfonia for strings and two oboes written for his opera Solomon. At the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, this famous piece marked the arrival of James Bond - actor Daniel Craig - with the Queen.

Vivaldi wrote many sparkling concertos for different wind instruments, but only one for brass – the Concerto for Two Trumpets.

It would have been difficult to play on the valveless trumpets of Vivaldi’s time, and even on modern trumpets it is a extremely virtuoso piece. It will be played, no doubt with panache, by the Lakeland Sinfonia’s trumpeters - husband and wife team Peter and Stella Crompton.

Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Greensleeves is based on a tune which has been around since the 16th century. Fantasia was originally part of VW's opera Sir John in Love, based on Shakespeare’s play The Merry Wives of Windsor. In his early career VW was interested in folk music and travelled the country collecting recordings of old folk songs. Another beautiful one – Lovely Joan – forms a secondary theme in the Fantasia.

Appropriately for a December concert, Lancashire composer Ernest Tomlinson’s Cinderella Suite was derived from music he wrote for a Christmas radio play in 1955. The concert will close with Manuel de Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance from his opera El amor brujo, in which a girl dances to exorcise her dead husband's ghost.

Tickets www.lakelandsinfonia.org.uk