Beatles in Symphony by the Canberra Symphony Orchestra at Llewellyn Hall

The Canberra Symphony Orchestra's artistic director and chief conductor, Nicholas Milton, is best known for classical music. But for the CSO's upcoming Matinee Magic concert he has put together a program featuring the work of one of the 20th century's premier popular music groups – the Beatles. Audiences will have the opportunity to hear many familiar tunes, in a new way as the CSO, with the largest on-stage orchestra it's had so far this year, performs them refashioned into orchestral suites.

Audience members are being encouraged to dress up Beatles-style and the best costumes will win a family pass to the 2017 Shell Prom Picnic Concert.

"The music is terrific, the music is well loved and the music is well known," Milton says, adding that the arrangements – of dozens of Beatles hits in medley form originally created for German and American orchestras – are "spectacular".

"I heard these arrangements in an outdoor concert in Germany in 2010 or so," he says.

Milton hadn't realised just how big a following the Beatles had in Germany, after their early performances in Hamburg, where there is a Beatles Museum.

But, of course, the Fab Four's popularity was worldwide, including Australia, and continues to this day. Milton thought it would be a good idea to bring Beatles songs in orchestral dress to Canberra.

"The songs are performed in a way people haven't heard before," he says.

"Percussion has a big role in the arrangements."

Essentially, the concert blends the symphonic sound and heft of the orchestra with a rock style of playing, accentuated by the emphasis on percussion.

Although the concert was his idea and he chose the arrangements, Milton won't be able to conduct Beatles in Symphony. Guy Noble, who earlier this year played Beethoven with the CSO (both musically and literally – he wore a wig), will wield the baton at this concert.

Noble, a musician and ABC Classic FM presenter, was born in 1963 and is old enough to remember Beatlemania during its heyday – he asked for, and received, a Beatles wig as a child. Noble remembers the impact of the release of the album, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. And his fascination with the Fab Four, their lives and their music, endured.

"People divided into Rolling Stones or Beatles – I was never a Stones fan," he says. "I liked the musical inspiration of the Beatles.

"When John Lennon was shot it was one of the most startling things, like Diana's death, like September 11."

Noble says he loves the sound of the Beatles – "they're so clean, it's an interesting sound, they showed you didn't need to be complex".

But, under the guidance of their producer, the man sometimes dubbed the "fifth Beatle", George Martin, they became more experimental, both musically and technically, playing with instruments, sounds, and lyrical content.

Among Noble's favourite Beatles songs are All You Need Is Love, with its incorporation of everything from a Bach prelude to a snatch of Glenn Miller's In the Mood, Penny Lane, and She's Leaving Home as well as Across the Universe. Noble says he thinks Lennon was a great lyricist and Paul McCartney a great composer and while he respects the achievements of both, overall, "I'm more a Paul man – he was more positive".

He believes they did their best work in the Beatles, that together they were greater than the sum of their considerable individual parts.

Noble never met a Beatle but has had two indirect Fab Four encounters. In the early 1990s he was working for a friend who installed fibre-optic cables at Elton John's house and saw what Ringo Starr had given his fellow rock star as a birthday present.

"What do you give someone who has everything?"

A 10-metre replica of a Tyrannosaurus rex, apparently.

And, more personally, Martin nearly disrupted Noble's wedding. Martin was conducting a concert which featured several brass players who were scheduled to play at Noble's wedding – and Noble received repeated messages that the "fifth Beatle" was performing encore after encore.

"I kept thinking, 'George Martin, would you stop!' "