"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
Writing
Critical acclaim for Mozart in Italy
"A fine conductor, Glover is also an accomplished writer, displaying, as in her earlier books, a nonchalant grace in marshalling her sources, reading cannily between their lines and taking care to provide proper historical context."
Jonathan Keates, Literary Review
"Glover writes fluently and attractively. She clearly loves Italy almost as much as she loves Mozart. Her accounts of his working methods are particularly fascinating, especially the way he lavished such care and attention on the abilities of his individual singers."
Martin Kettle, The Guardian
"Glover’s historical awareness of Italy#s operatic legacy is profound, like her expertise on all things Mozartian. So imbued is she in a time and place remote from our own that her narrations recall the charm of Miriam Rothschild's descriptions of habitats of fleas and butterflies: the otherwise dissimilar presenters share an all-encompassing concentration that is half-magisterial, half-naive... Glover is, rarer than a good conductor, an enchanting explainer. Her literary approach resembles her sometimes exceedingly subtle and decorous conducting."
Benjamin Ivry, Opera Now
"Glover recounts the three trips Leopold and Wolfgang took to Italy during Mozart’s teenage years, recreating in sparkling detail the world of eighteenth-century music."
Hannah Beckerman, The Observer
"Glover’s status - writing as a celebrated conductor and practitioner rather than with a career scholar’s restrictions - comes into its own... Laconic and drily witty, never knowingly overstated, Glover is a personable guide."
Alexandra Coghlan, The Spectator
"Brimming with life, Glover’s vibrant account of Mozart’s unique and absorbing adolescence is joyously rewarding."
Janet Somerville, Toronto Star
Critical acclaim for Handel in London: The Making of a Genius
"Remarkable ... Glover's command of detail is impressive ... Her beautiful descriptions of Handel's music sent me again and again, in mid-chapter, to my LPs and CDs to play the arias she had just described ... Handel in London is a delight to read"
Richard Stokes, Financial Times
"Written in elegant prose that wears its author's scrupulous scholarship lightly ... Glover deftly weaves musical analysis into her biographical flow. Her greatest achievement, however, is to give life and music a political and social context."
Richard Morrison, The Times
"Beautifully written ... This book's main achievement, though, is to evoke with admirable clarity and sympathy the rich, interdependent symbiosis between Handel, his singers, his audiences, the royal family and the great capital city that housed their life and work."
Jessica Duchen, Sunday Times
"Lively and warm ... It's refreshing to read a chronicle of Handel's years in London written by a renowned conductor and musicologist ... She wants us to love Handel's music as much as she does and she writes convincingly and fully about each work, singling out her favourite arias for mention, but always in a way that's readable by a music-loving lay person."
Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Country Life
"Inspiring and reassuring ... told with fluency"
Spectator
"Handel’s workload leaves one breathless. Reading, in Jane Glover’s beautiful prose, about the astonishing succession of masterpieces he composed is almost overwhelming. As is the schedule for the singers and musicians who learned one lengthy opera whilst performing another. I now have a much clearer picture of the man himself as he adapted his operas to suit the singers at his disposal, rewriting arias and nurturing young artists, and of his generosity in all he did for the Foundling Hospital. I’m full of admiration for the subject of the book, as I am for its author."
Dame Felicity Lott
"Behind Jane Glover's baton lurks a brilliant explainer in words, as well as music, able to unravel the threads of musical technique, performance history, and social and political events, exploring each before braiding them tightly together to weave a brightly coloured tapestry of Handel, of his music, and of the world about him. Handel in London is an education, and a delight."
Judith Flanders
"Delightfully readable, informed and enlivened like no other Handel biography by Jane Glover’s understanding of a professional music director’s life."
Dr Ruth Smith, author of Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought
"Jane Glover gives us a welcome portrait of Handel as a hard-working composer and conductor. She makes us feel the bruising schedule he set for himself, and for all who worked with him, from the point of view of a conductor who knows full well what it takes to mount Handel’s great opera or oratorios. She details Handel’s uncanny ability to choose his singers when given the opportunity, and she illustrates his amazing skill for writing to the strengths of all his singers, while also bringing to life the characters they portrayed."
Professor Ellen T. Harris
"How refreshing, to read a book about music written for a music lover and not a musicologist. In clear, lucid, entertaining prose, Jane Glover makes those of us who lack musical literacy better understand and appreciate Handel’s divinity. "
Donna Leon
Praise for Mozart's Women
“Only a practicing musician could have written this book, and only one as deeply immersed as Glover… who knows these pieces from long and loving contact with them in the pits of opera houses”
Simon Callow, The Guardian
“Jane Glover has pulled off a coup de livres with her fresh take on Mozart’s life and work… many conductors are good at talking about music, yet Glover belongs to that select band of conductor-scholars who have practical experience of the music they are writing about. As such, she offers insights into Mozart’s work that ought to be required reading for practicioners and will equally enlighten the most casual listener.”
John Allison, Sunday Telegraph
“Readable, informative, and moving book… Glover uses her own experience as a conductor of Mozart’s operas to give lucid and pertinent insights into the music… her passion for music shines through this touching, vividly told story.”
Hugh Canning, Sunday Times
“Jane Glover has produced a winner, showing us Mozart from a fresh and fascinating viewpoint: the women in his life… written in a delightful, accessible style, this is a book that anyone with an interest in Mozart should have. For the singer it is an indispensable treasure trove of information - altogether, hugely enjoyable.”
Dame Janet Baker
“Glover bridges the worlds of performance and scholarship in an informed, readable style that wears its learning lightly… believable dialogue and a keen eye for period detail makes it a delicious read.”
John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune