A SPECIAL concert is to take place this Saturday in memory of a popular historical figure.

To commemorate 250 years since the birth of William Wordsworth, a show will be held on Saturday, November 20.

Cumbria Festival Chorus and Orchestra alongside international tenor soloist Joshua Ellicott will perform in the Victoria Hall, Grange over Sands.

Each will perform three works, each of which sets words by Wordsworth, whose 250th birthday fell last year.

The concert has been besotted by obstacles.

It should have taken place last year but was prevented by the lockdown restrictions.

Then, after the problems with Covid protocols had receded, there had to be a last minute change of venue from Kendal Parish Church to Victoria Hall.

The concert includes two new pieces commissioned by Cumbria Festival Chorus from Cumbrian composers Jonathan Millican and Roland Fudge.

Jonathan Millican has taken an early poem of Wordsworth’s, words he used again later when he put together his autobiographical ‘Prelude’.

A concert organiser said: "The music is instantly appealing with majestic statements of the poet’s deepest beliefs on the natural world and its profound effect on his life.

"It’s powerful stuff: lyrical, melodic and dramatic!"

In the central section, Jonathan sets the famous skating episode of Prelude, and through the singing and the playing, captures the swirl of the skaters on the ice.

Roland Fudge chose the challenge of setting words from the sequence of sonnets describing the River Duddon from its source to the sea and the poet’s metaphor which links the progress of the river to the progress of human life and mankind’s frequently overweening ambition.

The final work is Gerald Finzi’s choral masterpiece setting Wordswoth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality’.

Moving, profound, heartwarming and a joy to hear, play and sing, the piece was performed in Kendal in 2010.

Now, South Lakelanders have a second opportunity to experience this in it's full orchestral and choral glory.