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Pianist Imogen Cooper
returns to Severance  

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by Mike Telin

It’s difficult to believe that it was in April of 2014 that the inimitable British pianist Imogen Cooper last appeared with The Cleveland Orchestra. Interestingly, it was Dame Jane Glover who was on the podium for that engagement. 

On Thursday, March 24 at 7:30 pm, Cooper and Glover will reunite with the Orchestra on the Severance Music Center stage. The program will include music by Britten, Mozart, Tallis, and Vaughan Williams. Performances continue through Sunday and tickets are available online.

From the beginning of our recent telephone conversation, it was clear that Cooper is excited to be back in Cleveland. “It’s lovely to be here. The sun is shining and I can’t wait to renew my relationship with the orchestra. It’s going to be a real joy,” the pianist said from her hotel room. “And that gorgeous hall that I love so much. I don’t think there’s a more beautiful hall in the world.” 

[Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: “Mozart in the Meadows” (July 11)

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by Peter Feher

It seems like every orchestra will be doing its version of Mozart in the great outdoors this summer, an old-fashioned program that has recently found new life. The combination of open-air venue, fewer musicians on stage, and repertoire at the ready seems to satisfy the pandemic equation.

Practical reasons aside, there aren’t many ensembles who can put together an all-Mozart evening as elegantly as The Cleveland Orchestra. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra & Chorus: Messiah with Jane Glover (Dec. 6)

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by Nicholas Stevens

As ClevelandClassical reported last week, the performances of Handel’s Messiah that Jane Glover led with the Cleveland Orchestra this past weekend marked her hundredth through hundred-and-third times conducting the oratorio. The world can only have a handful of definitive Messiah masters at any given time, and in our moment, she certainly belongs among them. As the Orchestra’s performance under Glover on Thursday, December 6 demonstrated, status as an expert confers a certain privilege: that of taking risks with a perennial favorite. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra: Jane Glover celebrates her 100th Messiah performance

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by Daniel Hathaway

Although she didn’t set out to make her appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus this week one for the record books, British conductor Jane Glover will reach her century mark of Messiah performances on Thursday evening, December 6 at Severance Hall, the first of four presentations of Handel’s oratorio through Sunday, December 9.

I reached Glover by telephone in London late last week during her quick trip home between engagements. “I was in Chicago doing the Christmas Oratorio until Tuesday,” she said. “I got back here on Wednesday morning and have had four days to turn around, and I’ll be coming back on Sunday. I’m so looking forward to Messiah in Cleveland. It’s going to be a high point of the year.”

I wanted to chat with the conductor about her personal approach to George Frideric Handel’s most famous oratorio, but I began by asking whether these concerts were to be her third or fourth engagements with the Orchestra.

Jane Glover: It will be my third appearance with The Cleveland Orchestra. I’m thrilled because it’s my favorite orchestra on the planet.

Daniel Hathaway: I believe I read an interview in which you said you’d already led 100 performances of Messiah.

JG: Actually, the first performance with Cleveland will be number 100. Last year I had a couple in the book that I had to cancel because something clashed with them. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra with Jane Glover, Joshua Smith & Yolanda Kondonassis (April 14)

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by Daniel Hathaway

KONDONASSIS-SMITHWhile half of The Cleveland Orchestra was busy downtown providing incidental music for The Good Peaches at the Cleveland Play House on Thursday evening, April 14, the rest of the ensemble played a scintillating concert of music by Haydn and Mozart uptown at Severance Hall under guest conductor Jane Glover, featuring principal flute Joshua Smith and harpist Yolanda Kondonassis. [Read more…]

Cleveland Orchestra this week: a chat with harpist Yolanda Kondonassis

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by Mike Telin

KONDONASSIS-SMITHMusic from the Classical era will be on tap when guest conductor Jane Glover makes a return visit to Severance Hall. On Thursday, April 14 at 7:30 pm, she will lead The Cleveland Orchestra in performances of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 6 (“Le Matin”) and Wolfgang Amadè Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp and Symphony No. 39.

Mozart’s pieces will be featured during the Orchestra’s Fridays@7 Series on April 15, and the full program will be repeated on Saturday, April 16 at 8:00 pm. On Sunday, April 17 the Orchestra will travel to Finney Chapel for a 4:00 performance on the Oberlin Artist Recital Series.     [Read more…]

Review: Cleveland Orchestra with Jane Glover and Imogen Cooper (April 24)

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by Daniel Hathaway

GLOVER-COOPER

The burning question after The Cleveland Orchestra’s concert on Thursday April 24 was why it took so long to bring conductor Jane Glover and pianist Imogen Cooper — either singly or together — to Severance Hall. The two British artists collaborated to produce a spectacular performance of Beethoven’s first concerto, and Glover led pristine and loveable readings of sinfonias by C.P.E. Bach and Johann Baptist Waṅhal* as well as a finely shaped account of Haydn’s “Drum Roll” symphony.

Glover set up a bright, sprightly introduction for Cooper in the Beethoven (the pared-down string section allowed the orchestra to play with amazing transparency). Responding with verve and an effortless elegance, Cooper breezed through her passagework, made perfect joins with Glover and the orchestra and pointed up exquisite moments like the sudden shift into E-flat. The recapitulation of the first movement was announced by a surprising blaze of horns and Cooper’s initially calm, orderly cadenza suddenly jolted the ear with wild chord juxtapositions. “She’s fantastic!” cried a woman in the row behind me. No shushing and no argument there. [Read more…]

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