"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
Music of the Baroque (March 2024)
"MOB’s music director is an experienced hand at these complex scores, and Glover’s performances of this repertoire have become deeper and more eloquent over her two decades in Chicago, plumbing the spirituality as much as the narrative drama. With some remarkable choral singing and a largely excellent lineup of soloists, this powerful and affecting St. John Passion was in the same sturdy tradition of Glover’s past Bach performances."
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (January 2024)
"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.
Among her many gifts, she is a renowned Mozart specialist, scholar and author. She has been music director of Chicago’s Music of the Baroque since 2002. Her distinguished work for decades on both sides of the Atlantic continues to impress on both symphony and opera stages.
Most of all, Glover’s obvious joy in leading Mozart’s music clearly communicated to listeners in Music Hall. Each work engaged the ear with stylish interpretation as well as with the profound humanity that colors Mozart’s music.
Glover led without a score, getting directly into the heart of each moment of this miraculous music. The musicians responded with pristine playing. Following lengthy ovations by the audience, the orchestra awarded Glover her own bow."
Toronto Symphony Orchestra (December 2023)
"The great British conductor Dame Jane Glover, now in her 74th year, led the monumental forces, that included 175 soloists, choristers, and TSO members, in a performance that was as intimate as it was dramatic. She treated the text as if it were a musical play. While some Messiahs are a wall of sound, her emphasis was on meaning and feeling, and because Dame Jane is a baroque specialist, she understands period style, and despite the fact that there were a gazillion music artists on the stage, this performance was akin to an early music concert.
The TSO itself performed superbly under Dame Jane, seeming to relish her careful and detailed treatment of the score.
All in all, Dame Jane Glover’s Messiah demands that you listen to the words. The concert is musical storytelling at its very best, as well as being a profoundly moving experience."
Music of the Baroque (November 2023)
"...the opening Allegro went with stately spiritedness, Glover and colleagues capturing Haydn’s symphonic wit. They toyed amusingly with the ubiquitous triplet upbeats in the ensuing Andante, which closed with articulate solos from the first chair violins. Oboist Anne Bach provided one final wind feature of the evening in the Minuet’s Trio, lending her shining tone to its prominent solos, and Glover brought vigor to the scampering Finale to close the evening in high spirits."
Tanglewood Music Festival (August 2023)
"Dame Jane Glover... drew a thrilling performance from the Tanglewood Music Center musicians. The playing was committed, intense and highly expressive. Every member seemed completely engaged in making music... the expression of the human spirit at its most profound."
Berkshire Eagle
Aspen Chamber Symphony Orchestra (June 2023)
"Aspen Chamber Orchestra, under the baton of Jane Glover, a regular visitor to Aspen, made the Sea Interludes into vivid scene-painting and the “Pastoral” Symphony made its points with finesse and a sense of balance between rhythmic vitality and tonal color."
"Circles of Friends", Music of the Baroque (May 2023)
"Glover injected a supple flowing quality to the central Andante. She and her colleagues capped the evening—and their Skokie season—with an infectious account of the concluding Allegro vivace, bounding in 6/8 with energy to spare."
"Dame Glover obviously knew it by heart and excited the audience by having her music stand put away and conducting without a score! Again, the very expressive Andante di molto più tosto Allegretto movement was directed without use of the baton, with the concluding Allegro vivace being extremely recognizable to the audience. What a sublime ending to this year’s MOB season"
San Francisco Symphony (April 2023)
"Glover, meanwhile, led the orchestra with a welcome combination of vigor and tenderness — the same qualities she brought to the entire program."
St Matthew Passion, Music of the Baroque (April 2023)
"Glover is a veteran hand at these large-canvas choral works, and Monday’s performance provided a virtual seminar in Bach conducting—pacing the narrative with firm momentum, ideal tempos and fine balancing of the orchestras, soloists and choruses... There was a greater expansiveness overall in her direction and more varied dynamics and phrasing. She balanced the fiery drama–as in the storm chorus and Judas’s betrayal–with a delicate inward expression at such moments as Jesus’s death."
"Music of the Baroque’s performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s The St. Matthew Passion—conducted by Dame Jane Glover, the ensemble’s longtime music director—was more than a concert. It was an experience... Music of the Baroque is, of course, one of the world’s leading interpreters of Bach, and it adeptly performed the piece’s instrumental interludes under the never-fail direction of Glover."
Albert Herring, Chicago Opera Theater (January 2023)
"Chicago Opera Theater introduced Albert Herring to local audiences in 1979, and virtually all of Britten's more intimate operas have taken honoured places in the repertoire of the city's second opera company, several under Glover's baton. She made her alert 13-member orchestra the most vital element of the performance, bringing out the infectious wit and fun of the dialogues and ensembles without neglecting the serious sensibility that counterbalances the satire. A musical triumph, then, to set alongside her previous accomplishments here, including bracing traversals of the Mozart-Da Ponte operas and the Monteverdi trilogy."
Opera Magazine
"The production marked the return of Jane Glover to COT’s pit—and at the Atheneum Center no less, the site of so many of her earlier triumphs with the company, including another of Britten’s masterworks, The Turn of the Screw, in 2004. It was worth the wait... Glover elicited beautifully textured sound from her fourteen players (special kudos to the comically pompous percussion) and her propulsive leadership easily confirmed her reputation as one the most theatrically responsive conductors around."
Opera News
Music of the Baroque with Gabriela Montero (January 2023)
"Glover’s interpretation was characteristically nuanced and controlled while still vibrant, and precisely shaped with the utmost economy of gesture. Stand-out moments included the breezy clarinet solo played by Zach Good — and echoed by Mary Stolper on flute in the Trio — and the opening theme of the finale, which Glover had the violins play molto piano at first before the full orchestra entered, heightening the Haydn-esque wit of the movement. Overall, Music of the Baroque’s performance of this late Mozart symphony demonstrated just why Glover is the master of Mozart."
Chicago Classical Review
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra (January 2023)
"Hearing Glover's spirited and elegantly nuanced Mozart 40th, it was clear she has this music in her blood and sinews. And the orchestra gave her every detail she'd obviously prepared and expressively conducted."
The Dallas Morning News
Handel: Jephtha, Music of the Baroque (September 2022)
"Glover led a boldly dramatic, silver-screen performance of Handel’s oratorio at the North Shore Center, one that made even veteran Handel hands seem pallid and ascetic by comparison. The evening moved with crackling urgency and Glover brought out the ingenuity of the music as well as the deep vein of feeling at its core."
Chicago Classical Review
Don Giovanni, Aspen Music Festival (August 2022)
"A strong cast, many singing their roles for the first time, and superb conducting from Dame Jane Glover, an Aspen regular for decades now, produced an enjoyable Don Giovanni. The spotlight trained on her all evening was well-deserved. She was the hero of the evening, keeping all the moving parts in place while encouraging Mozartean flavor in the music, from elegance to stern power."
Aspen Times
Chicago Symphony Orchestra (March 2022)
"The CSO performances under Glover were dispatched with the usual crisp direction, vigor and finish of her MOB performances... Glover directed an efficient and well-balanced reading. The spirited finale came off best with crackling energy, the violins excelling in their whirling part writing."
Chicago Classical Review
Cleveland Orchestra "Symphonic Mozart" (March 2022)
"The strings under early music specialist Jane Glover gave this listener gooseflesh as they ebbed and flowed through the “Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis,” a soaring flight on a 16th-century tune. They pushed into a state beyond their usual renowned coherence and throbbed as a single glorious entity."
Cleveland.com
Music of the Baroque with Anthony McGill (February 2022)
"The electricity of the intense communication between McGill and Glover was palpable in the virtuosic final movement, as if the music were being composed in the moment.
Conducting from memory, Glover’s gestures were precise and evocative, perfectly encapsulating the contrasting textures and weights throughout, particularly in the Andante. The anguished Minuet was heavy without being ponderous, while the woodwinds and horns were luminous in the Trio. Glover captured the playfulness of the opening salvo of the finale and led the orchestra to a rousing conclusion."
Chicago Classical Review
The Magic Flute, Houston Grand Opera (February 2022)
"The Houston Grand Opera Orchestra, led by conductor Jane Glover, brought out the score’s zip, charm and quasi-religous spaciousness with equal style.
Glover also had a knack for accentuating key moments for the singers: She gave Carroll time to linger over one of the high B-flats in Bei Männern,” and she waited a split-second to set up Schneider for the final, most majestic phrases of “O Isis und Osiris.” As attention-grabbing as all the animation was, Glover helped ensure that Mozart still got his word in."
Texas Classical Review
The Magic Flute, Metropolitan Opera (December 2021)
"The performance boasted a winning cast and glowing playing from the orchestra, led with elegance and insight by Jane Glover.
On the podium, Glover balanced warmth and brightness, breadth and high spirits, and rightly received an enthusiastic ovation. When she made her Met debut in 2013 in this holiday “Magic Flute,” she was just the third woman to conduct at the company. This current run is her first time back.
Glover has worked with the Royal Opera and the Glyndebourne Festival in England, the Berlin State Opera, the Royal Danish Opera and other major houses. Isn’t it time for the Met to utilize her full capabilities?"
New York Times
Music of the Baroque (September 2021)
"Few more formidable interpreters of the baroque master’s music walk the earth than Glover... She took care to balance the colors of winds against strings deftly and point the rhythms acutely."
Chicago Classical Review
Beethoven & Dvořák: Aspen Festival Orchestra (August 2021)
"In a season in which conductors too often let orchestras under their batons get a too loud too often for concerto soloists, Glover stood out by finding exquisite balances between ensemble and soloist without losing any of the necessary orchestral energy. Her every phrase had an arc, and she winnowed the ends of those phrases so they did not cover James Ehnes’ refined playing when it sailed into the fiddle’s highest notes. In the symphony Glover tied phrases together seamlessly, a welcome approach as Dvořák tended to map his music in blocks. She made the flow feel utterly natural."
Aspen Times
Mozart in the Meadows, Cleveland Orchestra (July 2021)
"Dame Jane Glover was the perfect conductor, with forces considerably reduced...Glover encouraged the orchestra’s natural tendencies, with releases that seemed magically to lift off the notes at the ends of significant phrases...Every detail of the concert had been executed with care and fine musicianship."
(Bachtrack)