"The audience’s enthusiastic response to Glover’s warm and skillful direction on the podium was like that of a rock star. Indeed, in the classical music world, she is a star."
Cincinnati Business Courier, January 2024
Latest Reviews
'Fathers & Sons': W.A. Mozart/L. Mozart & J.S. Bach/C.P.E. Bach, Music of the Baroque (January 2026)
"Braving Saturday’s extreme cold and snow flurries, Music of the Baroque and music director Dame Jane Glover explored both pairs of contrasting kinsmen in “Fathers & Sons,” a lively and musically rewarding program at the Harris Theater.
Watching Glover in this repertoire is a masterclass in gesture and phrasing. Leading batonless, the Mozart specialist and scholar proved just as sympathetic an interpreter of the elder Leopold’s symphony. She made a hearty meal out of the ten-minute diversion, bringing out the inner energy of the finale so that its repeated material was made new with each statement. In the accompanimental mode for Mozart and C.P.E. Bach’s concertos, Glover’s brushwork-like beats were elegance par excellence — just gently sweeping from her wrist or elbows, rather than beating through bars."
'Fathers & Sons': W.A. Mozart/L. Mozart & J.S. Bach/C.P.E. Bach, Music of the Baroque (January 2026)
"Glover led an expansive introduction to the Ouverture, and brought propulsion to the bounding triplet figures of its central section, adorned with gleaming trumpets and piping oboes. The Bourées were light on their feet, with guest principal bassoon Galina Kiep providing assured support to her double reed counterparts. Glover led a gallant Gavotte and courtly Menuets, before closing with the night with the ebullience of the final Réjouissance."
Handel Messiah, New York Philharmonic (December 2025)
"Midway through Messiah comes the chorus, ‘His yoke is easy, His burden is light’. Under Dame Jane Glover’s benevolent guidance, it had a wonderful weightlessness and buoyancy. The first of the New York Philharmonic’s three performances of Handel’s beloved oratorio had moments of great grandeur and power. It was the overall airy lightness and serenity, epitomized in this brief choral passage, that elevated it from a concert-going experience to a spiritual one.
The musicians of the NY Phil responded to Glover’s touch in much the same way as did the chorus, playing with lightness and finesse. As Handel intended, drama was created in the orchestra through orchestral color, particularly the trumpet and tympani. As with the chorus, the weightlessness of the orchestra’s playing added to the luster and emotional pull of the performance."
Handel Messiah, San Francisco Symphony (December 2025)
"One pleasure of Dame Jane Glover conducting Handel’s Messiah is being able to watch her shape the music with her hands. Poetic, at times flexible, at others precise, the baton-free hands always draw the orchestra and chorus toward a singular effect. For Messiah, which she has led more than 150 times in her career, there is nothing between her and the musicians — no stick, no score, no music stand.
Her hands, with the help of body language and penetrating eyes, communicated all that was necessary in a performance with the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus at Davies Hall. The rapt audience seemed to hang on every note, and on every word from an outstanding quartet of singers and the chorus."
Handel Messiah, Music of the Baroque (December 2025)
"Conducting a virtually complete performance from memory, Glover made all the rough places wondrously plain. Her forces, including a chorus of 26 voices and an orchestra of 27 players, were small enough to ensure proper intimacy of expression yet large enough to ensure resonant impact where needed in the narrative of Christ’s birth, life and resurrection...
...The music director knows Handel’s masterpiece inside and out, having led countless concert performances and also having recorded Messiah with Britain’s venerable Huddersfield Choral Society. Her interpretation brought Monday’s appreciative audience the best of two stylistic worlds-drawing on comfortable British choral tradition while freshening that tradition with elements of modern baroque style based on historically informed research into what Handel sought to achieve with his many versions of the work.
The result was overfamiliar music made to sound startlingly fresh and new.
Using chamber chorus and instrumental ensemble enabled Glover to enforce strong forward momentum with tempos that never felt rushed or, on the other end, overly slack. Her shaping of the long Handelian lines allowed phrases to breathe, all the while sustaining a firm command of the overarching narrative. Rhythms were crisp and bouncy, dynamic gradations subtly judged."
'Mozart and Mahler's Fourth', Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra (November 2025)
"The best Mahler Fourth Symphony in recent memory happened Friday night at Bass Performance Hall. For which thanks go to the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra and its principal guest conductor, Jane Glover.
Glover coaxed a performance flawlessly paced, stretching in just the right places, sometimes daringly, yet with a sure overview of structure. The music sounded spontaneous, and yet fastidiously organized."
'Dame Jane Conducts Mozart', Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (October 2025)
"Dame Jane Glover’s interpretations of Mozart masterworks were fresh at every turn in the concert she conducted on Oct. 18 in Music Hall.
The dark orchestral color that the conductor inspired in the slow movement, which Mozart cast in C Minor, was striking. Matsuo’s phrases were infused with pathos, answered with great beauty by Colberg’s viola. They used little vibrato in their cadenza, which helped to expose the emotion of the moment. For this movement, Glover put down her baton, shaping the music’s phrases with feeling. Their performance had the smiling-through-tears quality that only Mozart could have written.
After intermission, Glover conducted a rewarding performance of Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony. Every note sang, but more than that, you felt the depth and conviction of Glover’s interpretation in every phrase."
Orfeo ed Euridice, Music of the Baroque (September 2025)
"Glover’s direction was virtually faultless, with MOB’s longtime music director drawing vivid orchestra playing and convincing, subtly varied tempos in a work dominated by slow music. She brought great vitality to the contrasting underworld music, as with the violent string accents, and a buoyant lift to the joyous finale."
Clyne & Schubert, Aspen Music Festival (August 2025)
"Glover led a beautifully cohesive Schubert Symphony No. 9"
'Timeless Transformations', Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center (August 2025)
"Nothing yet has been said about the great British conductor, Dame Jane Glover. Perhaps because her control and her precision were both so perfect, rather than any conductorial idiosyncrasies, one remembered the music."
'Timeless Transformations', Festival Orchestra of Lincoln Center (August 2025)
"British conductor Dame Jane Glover led the orchestral musicians and some bright soloists through their paces in works by Michael Abels (via Vivaldi), Tchaikovsky and Mozart."
Handel Messiah, Aspen Music Festival (August 2025)
"All hail Dame Jane! She strode to her place center stage without a podium, baton or music stand for a score. She used her hands, her body and indefatigable energy to bring the music of this familiar and popular oratorio to vivid life. The performance hit all the right inflections, rhythms and expressions with elegance and, when necessary, power. She was a conjurer of the music’s magic."
'Mozart and His Mentors', Music of the Baroque (April 2025)
"Jane Glover’s exceptional gifts as a Mozart interpreter have been an article of faith at Music of the Baroque ever since her arrival as music director in 2002. In fact, scarcely a season has gone by when she hasn’t delved ever deeper into this bounteous and self-renewing body of works.
The splendid results, heard Monday night at the Harris Theater, not only shed new light on Mozart’s inexhaustible genius but also called to mind the astonishing amount of worthy music that languishes, largely unheard, just beyond the masterpieces of the Classical canon.
The ”Paris” Symphony also brought out the stylish best in Glover and her instrumental forces, here enlarged to pairs of woodwinds and horns, trumpet and timpani along with the string choir. The result was a hefty but always clear sound which the conductor balanced and urged forward steadily, with admirable control, dynamic contrasts finely drawn. Eschewing her baton, she made the Andante central movement the beating heart of the performance, an extended, heartfelt arioso."
Handel Jephtha (2022 recording), Music of the Baroque (March 2025)
"There was a time when admirers of Handel would find it difficult to access anything other than a few oratorios and operas; Messiah reigned supreme. Things have changed in recent years as this splendid performance of the composer’s dramatic Jephtha proves – and apart from anything else, the chance to hear the piece under Jane Glover is an opportunity is not be missed; no-one has more authority than the legendary Glover in bringing out every aspect of Handel’s glorious score, particularly with the top-notch batch of soloists she is working with here. In a recording that is both lucid and wide-ranging, Jephtha has never sounded better."
Handel Jephtha (2022 recording), Music of the Baroque (February 2025)
"It is a surprise and pleasure to see this new recording by the ever-irrepressible Jane Glover and her longtime association with the Music of the Baroque Orchestra.
The orchestra is superb, with rich tone and sharp contrasts, guided by Glover’s deep and long-lived experience in this music. But what thrilled me the most are the sonics, often substandard in concert recordings, here well-nigh perfect in presentation and warmth. Typical fine Reference Recordings production, complete with libretto. If you don’t know Jephtha, you are missing something. This is a good place to start."
'Glover Conducts English Classics', Chicgo Symphony Orchestra (February 2025)
"Glover was a spirited and assured podium presence as she led a lightish, Essentially English program of works for chamber orchestra.
Glover and the ensemble provided Chen with attentive, equally sensitive accompaniment, the British conductor giving her room to phrase freely and pointing up the contrast of the folk-like middle section."