Concert Programs

A work by Joel Järventausta

Trumpet Concerto

about 25 minutes

Program notes

About the Work

This is the first performance of Joel Järventausta’s Trumpet Concerto, a piece of about 25 minutes and the longest new work on the programme. The orchestra lists it as an LSO co-commission, and it has been written for one of its own players: James Fountain, the LSO’s Principal Trumpet, is the soloist. The composer’s publisher names the concerto among his main projects of the 2026/27 season.

Järventausta, a Finnish composer born in 1995, has a history with this orchestra. He was one of the six composers on the LSO’s Panufnik scheme in 2018/19, when he was working towards a doctorate at King’s College London, and he was then commissioned to write a longer piece. That was Sunfall, which the LSO introduced at the Barbican in April 2022 under François-Xavier Roth and, according to Music Finland, played again in Germany and Denmark in the days that followed. The concerto is a larger undertaking than Sunfall, which lasts about a quarter of an hour, and it puts a soloist in front of the orchestra that Järventausta has already written for.

The evening is built around the scheme. The two shorter new pieces are by composers from its 2024/25 intake, and Järventausta’s return shows where that road can lead: from a three-minute workshop piece to a full concerto in under a decade.

What to Listen For

No description of the concerto had been published when this guide was written, so it would be wrong to promise particular events. Some things can be expected on general grounds. Järventausta’s publisher describes his music in terms of vivid colours, distinctive sound-worlds and a delicate lyricism, and Music Finland notes how often his pieces take their cue from nature, paintings, books and poems. A trumpet concerto has to decide early what kind of instrument its soloist is to be: the bright, martial voice of tradition, or the quieter, singing one that players of Fountain’s schooling, which began with the cornet in brass bands, know just as well. A span of 25 minutes leaves room for both.

Upcoming performances & concert guides

Upcoming

Each concert’s guide adds notes on that evening’s performers and the rest of the programme.

Sources 5

  1. LSO Futures: Elim Chan and James Fountain, 17 June 2027, London Symphony Orchestra Cited in LSO Futures: Elim Chan Conducts Adams and Three New Works. Accessed 8 October 2026.
  2. London Symphony Orchestra/Elim Chan, Barbican Cited in LSO Futures: Elim Chan Conducts Adams and Three New Works. Accessed 8 October 2026.
  3. LSO Helen Hamlyn Panufnik Composers’ Scheme, London Symphony Orchestra Cited in LSO Futures: Elim Chan Conducts Adams and Three New Works. Accessed 8 October 2026.
  4. Joel Järventausta, Wise Music Classical Cited in LSO Futures: Elim Chan Conducts Adams and Three New Works. Accessed 8 October 2026.
  5. Joel Järventausta’s Sunfall commissioned by LSO premiered this week, Music Finland Cited in LSO Futures: Elim Chan Conducts Adams and Three New Works. Accessed 8 October 2026.