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Dame Jane Glover realizes that she might be considered something of a late bloomer.
To be clear, the British conductor’s career flowered quite nicely after her professional debut in 1975 at the Wexford Festival in southeastern Ireland, but it has kicked into an even higher gear starting about a dozen years ago.
In 2013, she became the just the third woman to conduct New York’s Metropolitan Opera, and major debuts have come regularly since, including the Cleveland Orchestra in 2021, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2022 and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra this year.
“Maybe I’ve just hit my prime,” said Glover, now 75, with a chuckle. “It’s been a long time coming. I’m really having a blast, because I’m working with top orchestras and opera companies, and I realize how blessed I am.”
In keeping with this run of heady engagements, the conductor will return Feb. 20-22 to the CSO for her second appearance with the ensemble, but this appearance will come with a bit of a twist. For her first set of concerts, she conducted works from the Baroque and Classical eras for which she is best known, but this upcoming program mostly goes in another direction.
“I’m very happy to be stepping out of the 18th century,” Glover said. “Although my heart is thoroughly in the 18th century — I sort of feel that’s where I belong — I’ve actually got a broader repertoire than a lot of people know.”
The Feb. 20-22 program draws on another of Glover’s specialties — English music. “I obviously do a lot of English repertoire,” she said. “Benjamin Britten is incredibly close to my heart. I conduct his music as often as I can.”
The CSO does not tend to perform a great deal of English music, as the orchestra’s history with the works on this lineup makes clear. The program will be highlighted by the ensemble’s first-ever performances of Britten’s Suite on English Folk Tunes: A time there was..., Op.90, which was the composer’s final orchestral work, written two years before his death in 1976.
“I’ve done them quite a bit,” said Glover, who was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2021 New Year’s Honors. “Orchestras often discover them with me and love playing them. I’m really looking forward to that.”
Also featured will be Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending (1921), which the orchestra has performed just once before in 2010, and Edward Elgar’s Serenade in E Minor for String Orchestra, Op. 20 (1892). The CSO previously presented the latter in Orchestra Hall in 2003. Glover called both of these works “little masterpieces.”
Rounding out the English portion of the program is Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 in D Major (London), which was composed in 1795 when the Austrian composer was living in the British city. It is the composer’s final work in the form.
Opening the second half is something of a musical contrast from across the English Channel — France, Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane for Violin and Orchestra, which will feature the CSO’s Concertmaster Robert Chen as soloist.
In Chicago, Glover is best known as the music director of the Music of the Baroque, which brings together two entities: a 32-piece orchestra and 26-voice chorus. The former is drawn from members of the CSO, Lyric Opera Orchestra and other top musicians in the region. She has held the role since 2002, making her by far the longest-serving music director of a major orchestral ensemble in Chicago.
“I just love it,” she said. “I absolutely love it. It’s a very special group of musicians from the top orchestras in Chicago who come to play this repertoire because they love it. I adore them, and I adore what we do. I’m very aware that after the 20 years, the territory needs to change a bit, but I hope I’ll still be attached to MOB for as long as possible.”
While holding on to the Music of the Baroque’s anchor of stability, Glover is also charting a new course in Texas. In February 2024, the Fort Worth Symphony appointed her as principal guest conductor, a post she will begin this August. “I’ve been to the orchestra a couple of times and really like them and liked the hall. And we just sort of hit it off,” she said.
She knows the orchestra’s music director, Robert Spano, because he also holds the same post with the Aspen (Colo.) Music Festival, where Glover conducts regularly, often leading productions at the Aspen Opera Theater. So when Spano called to offer her the Fort Worth position, she did not hesitate. “I thought, why not?” she said. “It’s a lovely orchestra, and it will give me a chance to do repertoire that I don’t do always do.”
The new post in Fort Worth will amplify her presence in the United States, where most of her musical activities already take place. “I have practically no work in the United Kingdom, which is sad,” she said, “because it would be nice to go back to one’s own bed at the end of the day. But on other hand, I absolutely love what I do, and I’m thrilled to be doing it at the level I’m doing it and with the regularity of what I’m doing.”
