Archives for May 2021

by Jarrett Hoffman

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

American composer Charles Ives died on this date in 1954 in New York City at the age of 79. Just over a week ago, the New York City-based Junction Trio (above) performed his Piano Trio on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series at Saint Paschal Baylon in Highland Heights, and a recording of the concert is still available to watch until the end of the day today.

Before the performance, violinist Stefan Jackiw shares some history about Ives, including one great story from the composer’s youth. Jackiw paints the scene of multiple bands playing marches in different keys, and converging on the Danbury, CT town square, where young Ives was “seated in the eye of this cacophonous storm.” Perhaps an influence on Ives’ polytonality?

Jackiw also discusses the discouragement Ives faced while studying composition at Yale, his success in the insurance industry, and one anecdote about his father, the bandmaster George Ives, who didn’t mind some off-key singing one bit. (“You won’t get a wild, heroic ride to heaven on pretty little sounds.”)

Click here to watch the concert, where you can listen to the Ives discussion at the 13:14 mark, then dig into the Piano Trio at 18:17. Also on the program: music by John Zorn and Beethoven. (Read our recent interview with all three Junction members here.)

One lesser-known composer to highlight today is Alice Mary Smith, who was born on this date in 1839, and who became the first British woman known to have composed a symphony. Her first of two contributions to that genre, in the key of c minor, was written at age 24 and premiered by the Musical Society of London in 1863.

Thankfully, conductor Howard Shelley and the London Mozart Players have recorded that fine work (listen here) as well as the beautifully lyrical Andante for Clarinet and Orchestra (here), where the orchestra is joined by clarinetist Angela Malsbury.

ONLINE TODAY:

At noon, the latest “Brahms-Fest” from Trinity Cathedral’s Virtual Brownbag series features the Piano Quintet in f in the hands of Andrew Sords and Mari Sato, violins, Claire Peyrebrune, viola, Helen Peyrebrune Hawersaat, cello, and Elizabeth DeMio, piano. (If you’re reading this later today, it’s still available here.)

Moving into the evening, violinist Miran Kim gives a 7pm guest recital at CIM, joined by violinist Yun-Ting Lee and pianist Shuai Wang. The program includes Brahms’ Violin Sonata No. 1 in G, Jessie Montgomery’s Rhapsody No. 1, and Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins in C.

And at 7:30, Piano Cleveland offers the third and final session of its Prelude to Piano series: “What Makes it Great (And Not Just Good),” hosted by Yaron Kohlberg. “From technique and touch to interpretation, Yaron will take you through all the elements that make piano playing go from good to great.”

Details — and listening options from further afield — can be found in our Concert Listings.

by Daniel Hathaway

TODAY’S CONCERTS

For a change. each of the two concerts on today’s calendar can be attended in-person, following whatever protocols are being observed in their venues.

At noon, harpist Juan Riveros plays French music by Gabriel Fauré, André Caplet, and Jean-Michel Damase on the Tuesday noon series at the Church of the Covenant in University Circle.

At 7:30 this evening, violinist James Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong finally have the opportunity to complete their three-concert Beethoven Sonata series with a recital on the Cleveland Chamber Music Society series in St. Paschal Baylon Church in Highland Heights. The final program includes the second and third Sonatas of Op. 30, and the much later Sonata in G, Op. 96. You’ll need tickets to attend in person, but a live stream is free. Details in our Concert Listings.

NEWS BITS:

The Lumière Quartet has won the Silver Medal in the Junior Division of the Fischoff Competition. The ensemble — Célina Béthoux, Moonhee Kim, Henry Rogers, and Ania Lewis — has been coached at the Cleveland Institute of Music by Si-Yan Li and Jessica Lee.

Naxos will release a new CD of Margaret Brouwer’s chamber music later this year. The recording will include her Rhapsodic Sonata, Declaration, The Lake, I CRY, and All Lines are Still Busy, performed by mezzo-soprano Sarah Beaty, tenor Brian Skoog, violinist Mari Sato, violist Eliesha Nelson, and pianist Shuai Wang.

Brouwer writes, “We recorded most of the music in CIM’s Kulas Hall in early January. Then in February, in true pandemic fashion, the mezzo-soprano recorded the vocal line of Declaration remotely in Los Angeles while I produced the recording session on FaceTime from Cleveland! This technology worked great and we were able to capture a beautiful recording even though the musicians were in different states.”

INTERESTING READS:

Sunday’s New York Times featured an article by David Allen about conductor Artur Rodzinski, who led The Cleveland Orchestra from 1933 to 1943. Read The Conductor Who Whipped American Orchestras Into Shape here. (“Possessing an ‘enormous’ vocabulary of Polish profanity that he unloaded on musicians, as Time magazine reported, Rodzinski was also rumored to conduct with a revolver in his pocket.”)

And today’s Times prints Anthony Tommasini’s review of the MET Opera’s first live concerts since the shutdown. “Members of the Met’s orchestra and chorus, conducted by its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and joined by four soloists, twice presented a 45-minute program for an audience of 150.

“The location wasn’t the company’s home at Lincoln Center; instead, the concerts were held at the Knockdown Center, a door factory turned rough-hewed art and performance space in Queens.”

Artist managers act as liaisons between performing artists and their ultimate audiences. Billboard magazine takes a look at IMG Artists and Opus 3, who are redefining the landscape since Columbia Artists suddenly folded in 2020. Read Pulling Back the Curtain on Alexander Shustorovich, Classical Music’s International Man of Mystery here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Let us now praise famous musicians who arrived or departed on May 18.

First, two German composers. Johann Froberger was born on this date in 1616 in Stuttgart, and Georg Böhm took his leave in Luneburg in 1733.

When not in the service of the noble families of Stuttgart, Froberger traveled throughout Europe, establishing himself as a virtuoso organist and harpsichordist, and was the inventor of the dance suite that served the formal needs of composers well into the 18th century. He also pushed the Arca Musarithmica, an early A.I. device that assisted in the creation of music.

Watch French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau perform Suites by Froberger — and by Louis Couperin, whose music he influenced — in a live broadcast from Salle Cortot in Paris in 2020, and read more about the Arca Musarithmica here.

Böhm was working for the French-influenced court in Luneburg when Johann Sebastian Bach was a teenaged chorister at a church down the street. Enjoy two of Böhm’s engaging works played on the Schnitger organ in Groningen by Wim van Beek. We’ll start with his multi-sectioned Präludium in g, then move on to his variations on Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele — the next-to-last variation introduces some stunning blue notes into the harmony.

Two basses come up in today’s list: the birth of Ezio Pinza in Rome in 1892, and the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in 2012. We featured the latter in an earlier Diary, so we’ll move on to Pinza, who, despite never having learned to read music, enjoyed a long and distinguished opera career beginning in Milan under Toscanini and continuing at the MET in New York.

Watch some rare video of Pinza rehearsing for a Bell Telephone Hour program in 1947, and recall his second career on Broadway in clips from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific, where he appeared opposite Mary Martin as the French planter Emil de Becque.

German composer and conductor Gustav Mahler died in Vienna on this date in 1911, leaving nine-and-a-half monumental symphonies that were performed during his lifetime, but languished until their revival later in the century, notably by Leonard Bernstein. The works suited the conductor’s extroverted personality, as can be witnessed in this 1973 performance of No. 2, the “Resurrection” Symphony, at Ely Cathedral. (In 2018, the film of the performance was screened at Ely, preceded by interviews). I had the unforgettable experience of singing the work with Bernstein and the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in the early 70s.

The roots of Mahler’s music are explored by Bernstein’s spiritual successor, Michael Tilson Thomas, in two episodes of Keeping Score with the San Francisco Symphony.

Finally, on this date in 1975, American composer and arranger Leroy Anderson died in Woodbury, Connecticut. Long associated with Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, the Harvard grad was famous for such light classics as Bugler’s Holiday, played here by Cleveland Orchestra principal trumpet Michael Sachs with the UCLA Wind Ensemble and two of his young colleagues. Occasionally, Anderson aspired to more ambitious works. Watch a rare performance of his Piano Concerto here.

by Jarrett Hoffman

ONLINE TODAY:

Two live-streamed events air at 7:30 pm: Oberlin Conservatory’s Grand Piano Extravaganza, and a concert of music for woodwinds and piano from the Rocky River Chamber Music Society. Read our preview of the RRCMS program here, and find details about both events in our Concert Listings.

NEW VIDEOS:

Musicians of The Cleveland Orchestra launched a new digital series this month, MusiCLE Yours, devoted to solo and chamber music by familiar and lesser-known composers.

The first entry, filmed at Plymouth Church, explores William Grant Still through the lens of his Incantation and Dance for oboe and piano, and the first movement of his Danzas de Panama for string quartet. And the second entry, released yesterday, features the opening movement of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet in a performance at the Cleveland History Center.

ADDITIONS TO THE CALENDAR:

The Bop Stop has announced its first outdoor concerts of the season, happening this coming weekend. Saturday brings Blue Lunch, and Sunday the Alba Trio.

INTERESTING READ:

Last month, via a pre-recorded recital, pianist Dan Tepfer shared a segment of his well-known project built around Bach’s Goldbergs, in which he improvises on each of the composer’s variations. Now he’s giving a similar treatment to Bach’s fifteen two-part inventions, but in this case, his aim is to use his own free improvisations to “fill in” the nine musical keys not included in that work. He touched on that in our April preview article:

In the Inventions project it’s very different: I’m not responding to any specific material of Bach’s, but instead, improvising my own inventions from scratch, coming up with ideas and structure in the moment. It’s vertiginously freeing. The connection with Bach is that I’m operating, in my own way, within the same system of tonal harmony and thematic continuity that Bach used, which it’s taken me many years to get comfortable with.

He digs more deeply into that project in conversation with Anthony Tommasini for The New York Times.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

As Peter Phillips wrote in a 2014 article for The Spectator, the reputation of performing musicians “can never be as secure as those of composers: the former are recreative artists, the latter creative, with posterity always remembering the creative ones, no matter how good the former may have been in their lifetimes.”

Sadly, Phillips seems to be correct in that assessment. Recently passed performers still linger in our memories. But long-gones ones seem to be only remembered here and there, and often only by the practitioners of their same instrument or voice type, in a way that ends up feeling nerdy.

Think of all the incredible performers around us today. What an insulting prospect for them.

And so, despite the fact that Erik Satie (born today in 1866) and Paul Dukas (died on this date in 1935) are the most recognized names to grace this date in classical music history, let’s set to work rectifying this imbalance, even just a little bit, with a celebration of four performers whose names shan’t be lost to history.

Marcel Moyse, born on this date in 1889 in St. Amour, France, is a legend of the flute. He played principal in several French orchestras, appeared widely as a soloist, and left behind a long list of recordings. Having taught at the Paris and Geneva Conservatories, written 37 flute etude books, and given a famous series of master classes on several continents, his teaching is just as renowned. He also co-founded the Marlboro School of Music in Vermont, where he moved in 1949.

Pay a visit to the Marcel Moyse Society here, and listen to his short and beautiful recording of Dvořák’s Humoresque (arranged by Kreisler), full of lyrical expression and subtlety.

Sticking with the woodwinds, we move to oboist John de Lancie, who passed away of leukemia on May 17, 2002 in Walnut Creek, California. (His son is the actor of the same name.) And though he was also born in California, it’s in the City of Brotherly Love where he became most famous, holding the principal chair in the Philadelphia Orchestra for 23 years and serving as director of the Curtis Institute of Music for 8 years — until his controversial forced resignation — in addition to teaching at the school.

Although he didn’t commission or premiere it, de Lancie is forever tied to one of the most important works for oboe. Having served in the U.S. Army in World War II, de Lancie met Strauss in Bavaria following the war, when his unit was securing the area around Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where Strauss was living. He asked the composer if he had thought about writing a concerto for oboe. The answer was no, but only several months later, lo and behold, Strauss had put the finishing touches on the Oboe Concerto. Listen to de Lancie play it in a recording here.

Quotes about hornist Dennis Brain — who was born on this date in 1921, and died 36 years later in a car crash — can come across as over-the-top, that is until you hear his superb playing. Among the many accomplishments he achieved in his short life are his recordings of Mozart’s four horn concertos with Herbert von Karajan and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Listen here, and be wowed.

And John William Boone (“Blind Boone”) was born on May 17, 1864 — during the Civil War — in a Union Army camp near Miami, Missouri, his mother an escaped “contraband” slave. Blind from infancy, his ear and talent for music became clear from an early age. In his teens, he began a nearly 50-year career as a pianist and composer, eventually finding great success playing classical music, popular music, folk tunes, and spirituals, appealing to a wide audience. As for his own compositions, many scholars now see them as an important precursor to ragtime.

Read more about his fascinating life from Historic Missourians. Then listen to Boone’s own Carrie’s Gone To Kansas City here, and the edited piano roll he recorded of When You and I Were Young, Maggie here.

by Daniel Hathaway

ONLINE AND IN-PERSON TODAY:

Cleveland Chamber Choir, sidelined by the pandemic, has found ways to rehearse together and record. On Saturday, Scott MacPherson leads them in “Madrigals for All Times,” a pre-recorded program that contrasts different settings of the same poetry composed many years apart.

Although classes have ended for the year at the Oberlin Conservatory, there are still performances to be aired on its Stage Left platform, including Saturday’s large ensembles’ performances of works by David Clay Mettens, Eleanor Alberga, and Jennifer Higdon.

Speaking of Oberlin, on Sunday, alumna organist Katelyn Emerson returns to the area for a progressive recital at two churches in Canton. And speaking of organs, the Stambaugh Organ Series is back with a recital by Joshua Stafford that can be attended in person or watched online on the Stambaugh Auditorium app.

North Coast Winds plays a Sunday concert at Lakeside Chautauqua under the auspices of the Firelands Symphony, including an arrangement of Dvořák’s Wind Serenade that pares the performing forces down from 15 to 5.

And baritone Allan Mosher and pianist Cicilia Yudha wrap up the weekend with a Youngstown State faculty recital pre-recorded at the McDonough Museum. There’s only one piece on the program: Schubert’s Winter Journey.

THIS WEEKEND’S ALMANAC:

The list of anniversaries is very short for May 15 and 16. Venetian printer Ottaviano de’ Petrucci published his Odhecaton A — the first of three volumes, with B and C to follow — on May 15, 1501, marking the first occasion when a collection of polyphonic music (chansons in this case) was printed from moveable type, making Petrucci the Gutenberg of Renaissance music. Although his process required passing each page through his press three times, his accomplishment was still a milestone in the dissemination of printed music. It’s not for nothing that the wonderful online library of public domain music in pdf format has been named the Petrucci Music Library.

Here’s Josquin des Prez’ chanson, Adieu mes amours in Petrucci’s elegant printing of the first Odhecaton volume. It’s laid out in typical Renaissance fashion with each of the four voices printed in a separate quadrant rather than on top of each other in score (as the chanson appears below). Watch a performance here by Fuse di Venere.

The great Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi was born either on May 15 or 14, 1567 in Cremona, later serving the household of the Duke of Mantua and the “most serene republic” of Venice, and launching the early Baroque period with a flurry of inventive works including opera, church music, and madrigals.

Jeannette Sorrell and Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, have programmed a lot of Monteverdi’s music in various halls in Northeast Ohio as well as across the U.S. and Europe. Here are a few videos from their archives.

We’ll start with a collection of secular works from the 2020 program, “L’AMORE — Love and Rejection in Old Italy,” performed at St. Paul’s in Cleveland Heights. (It begins with a piece by Barbara Strozzi, then goes on to selections from L’Incoronazione di Poppea, and the Scherzi musicali. Watch here.

One of the composer’s monuments is the Vespers of 1610, written for the Mantuan court, which has required some reassembly, having been published as individual pieces. One of the motets editors haven’t quite known what to do with but has to be included because of its powerful declamation, Duo Seraphim was sung by tenors Jacob Perry, Nathan Hodgson and Nathan Dougherty at First Baptist Church in October, 2019. Watch here.

Like all Vespers services, Monteverdi’s setting concludes with the Magnificat. His bravura setting covers most of the stylistic bases available to the composer, including wonderful echo effects (I heard a performance at the Edinburgh Festival where the conductor had the echo tenor sing his part from the Gents’ just off the balcony of the performing venue — a perfect location.) Apollo’s Fire performs it here in Trinity Cathedral in November of 2014.

Finally, here’s an exquisite performance by tenor Karim Sulayman of Monteverdi’s Si dolce è il tormento (How sweet the torment) from an Apollo’s Fire “Blues Café 1610” performance on Valentine’s Day of 2015 at the Music Box Supper Club in Cleveland.

The only other anniversary of note is the birth of American composer Richard Wilson in Cleveland on May 16, 1941. Having imbibed concerts by The Cleveland Orchestra under George Szell at an early age, he went on to study at Harvard and Rutgers, then taught at Vassar from 1966 to 2016. Wilson was awarded the Cleveland Arts Prize in 1988.

He has a long list of compositions in every genre, so it’s worth wondering why we don’t hear more of his music in his hometown. For a taste of Wilson’s style, read about his “shaggy dog” opera, Aethelred The Unready, here, then watch a performance conducted by the composer and directed by Drew Minter here.

by Daniel Hathaway

IN THE NEWS:

Oberlin Conservatory honored long-serving faculty members Michael and Marlene Rosen, Professors of Percussion and Voice, respectively, with a virtual retirement party last Tuesday. The online party culminated in an Oberlin Stage Left performance by the Oberlin Percussion Group conducted by Mike Rosen, who has taught at the school for 50 years (watch the performance here — scroll down to “New Release”). For a virtual celebratory toast, in keeping with newly-minted pandemic traditions, the Rosens provided a recipe for French 75, their favorite cocktail, in both original and non-alcoholic versions. Clink!

Apollo’s Fire has added outdoor concerts and touring dates to its summer schedule. Local concert sets include “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (May 30 & 31), and “Bach, Vivaldi & Friends” (July 10, 13 & 14). The Orchestra will be on the road for summer festival concerts at Tanglewood (July 16), Chautauqua (July 27), Caramoor (August 1), and Ravinia (August 3). Details here.

ORCHESTRAS RETURN:

The Canton Symphony returns to the stage of Umstattd Performing Arts Hall on Sunday, May 23 after a hiatus of 15 months for an in-person performance of Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings and Mozart’s Symphony No. 29 in A. Details here.

And BlueWater Chamber Orchestra is recording a concert at the Maltz Performing Arts Center to be broadcast online on Thursday, May 27 at 7:30 pm. Daniel Meyer conducts “Honor, Hope and Gratitude: Tender reflections on a challenging year,” with guest pianist Angela Cheng. Complete information here.

COMPETITION NEWS AND AWARDS:

Cooper International Piano Competition veteran and ChamberFest young artist Evren Ozel has advanced to the finals in the Concert Artists Guild competition. Winners will be announced on June 8.

Two local groups, the Eiless Quartet (Senior Division) and the Lumiére Quartet (Junior Division) are scheduled to perform in the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, to be live streamed on the Violin Channel from May 14-16.

And Cleveland Orchestra Associate Conductor Vinay Parameswaren is among the fifteen recipients of career assistance awards from the Solti Foundation.

ONLINE AND IN-PERSON TODAY:

Check in for the first day of the 48th annual Fischoff Chamber Music competition, for Lunchtime With the Cleveland Orchestra (Uri Caine’s arrangement of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations), WCPN’s Applause Performances featuring Cleveland bossa nova king Moises Borges and percussion master Dylan Moffitt, Klaus Mäkelä and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Imani Winds with the Catalyst Quartet, and register for an in-person concert by CityMusic Cleveland at St. Stanislaus. Details here.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Before lighting the birthday candles for historical figures born on May 14, let’s observe the passing of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel in 1847 at the too-young age of 43. That Felix Mendelssohn’s sister could hold her own is demonstrated in her piano cycle Das Jahr (played here on a doctoral recital in Montréal by Laurence Manning), and — all too appropriate during a pandemic — her “CholeraMusik” (Oratorium nach Bildung der Bibel), performed here by Cappella Clausura.

On to happier things, German conductor Otto Klemperer was born on this date in 1885 in Breslau, and forced to leave his post at the Hamburg Opera in 1915 after a scandal involving a recently married soprano. In popular culture, his son Werner probably eclipsed his fame as the actor who played the bumbling Colonel Klink in the CBS television series Hogan’s Heroes. But back to the concert world, here’s Otto Klemperer’s take on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the New Philharmonia Orchestra.

The life and career of American composer Lou Harrison, born on this date  in 1917 in Portland, Oregon, is summarized in a documentary that includes interviews with John Cage and Virgil Thomson. For a taste of Harrison’s lively music, watch a performance here of his Concerto for Organ, Percussion, and Strings at Trinity Wall Street in April of 2017 by organist Chelsea Chen and Rutgers Percussion conducted by Patrick Gardner, during the Lou Harrison Centennial Festival.

And Cuban-American composer Tania León, born in Havana in 1943, is credited with introducing Afro-Cuban percussion instruments into symphonic works. Her five-movement Ritmicas is a fine example. The performance was organized by the Chicago Center For Contemporary Composition.

by Mike Telin

STREAMED CONCERTS:

Today at 12:00 pm, it’s Lunchtime with The Cleveland Orchestra on WCLV 104.9 Ideastream. Franz Welser-Möst leads performances of Johann Strauss Jr: “Waltz” from Tales from the Vienna Woods, Haydn’s Piano Concerto No. 11 in D (Emanuel Ax) and Wagner’s “Prelude & Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde. Listen on the web.

At 7:00 pm, Local 4 Music Fund’s “Tuning In” series features pianist Eric Charnofsky. His program includes Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso, J.S. Bach’s English Suite No. 2, BWV 807, Debussy’s Suite Pour le Piano, Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Two Preludes, Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ Prelude for a Pensive Pupil (1958), Chopin’s Scherzo #2 in b-flat, Op. and Stravinsky’s Piano-Rag-Music (1919). Online only. Click here at start time. The concert is free, but donations are welcome.

There’s more happening in other parts of the country — check our Concert Listings page for details.

NEWS: 

In honor of Baldwin Wallace University’s 175th anniversary, composer-in-residence and associate professor of composition Clint Needham has written a new fanfare  commemorating the milestone. Needham’s music always has a way of grabbing your attention, and Inspiring Light does that from the very first note. Click here to listen to a performance by BW faculty and students.

TODAY’S ALMANAC:

Today we celebrate the births of two British musical luminaries who made their debuts on May 13. Both will have a presence in Northeast Ohio’s classical music scene this summer.

In 1842 composer Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan came into the world in London. Sullivan exhibited his musical prowess early on — at the age of eight he composed his first anthem and soon after became a soloist in the boys’ choir of the Chapel Royal. At age 14 the Royal Academy of Music awarded Sullivan the first Mendelssohn Scholarship, allowing him to pursue his musical studies at the Academy as well as the Leipzig Conservatory. His early works include a ballet, a symphony, and a cello concerto. His early catalogue features 80 popular songs, parlour ballads and hymns including Onward, Christian Soldiers. In addition to composing, Sullivan was employed as a church organist and music teacher.

Today Sullivan is best known for his fourteen operatic collaborations with William Schwenck Gilbert —  their first being Thespis in 1871. Four years later Gilbert and Sullivan were commissioned to write a one-act piece, resulting in Trial by Jury. That opera will be presented this summer as part of Ohio Light Opera’s outdoor season. Click here for performance details.

In 1949 conductor Dame Jane Glover (pictured at top) was born in Helmsley, England. Glover’s first conducting experiences came while she was a student at Oxford.  She made her professional debut at the Wexford Festival in 1975 leading the first modern performance of Eritrea. In 1979, she began her association with the Glyndebourne Festival and served as music director of its touring company from 1981 to 1985.

Glover was a regular on  BBC Television during the1980s, hosting the series Orchestra with Jane Glover in 1983 and Mozart – His Life with Music in 1985. She served as music director of the London Mozart Players from 1984 to 1991 and since 2002, has been music director of the Chicago-based ensemble Music of the Baroque.

As an author, her book Mozart’s Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music delves into  influences of the women surrounding the composer, and her Handel in London: The Making of a Genius, looks at the composer’s work as “immigrant musical genius, composer, performer and impresario.”

In 2018 at Severance Hall, Glover led The Cleveland Orchestra in her 100th performance of Handel’s Messiah. On July 11 at 7:00 pm, Dame Glover will return to the Orchestra’s podium for an all-Mozart concert at Blossom Music Center. The program includes the Divertimento for Strings in D, Piano Concerto No. 20 with soloist Benjamin Grosvenor, and the Symphony No. 40 in g. Click here for details.

Click here to listen to Glover “break down” Mozart’s Gran Partita, K. 361, movement by movement.