BBC MAGAZINE, "Who is who in music"
New Blood: Jan G. Jiracek (German, 1973)
A forceful, mature personality with a formidable technique
and playing of emotional depth.
_____________________
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Jiracek possesses a muscular, broad, colorful technique,
makes music with great spontaneity and communicates
strongly with his listeners. His program showed his
strenghts, his impeccable taste and his love of
music.
_____________________
NEW YORK TIMES
His playing had both an animating spark of originality and
great technical assurance.
_____________________
The Herald, South Africa | Rupert Mayr
A captivating performance
Right
from the opening bars Jiracek captivated his audience by
exemplary clarity, dynamic restraint and equal attention
given to both thematic lines and accompaniment figures.
Even more important, however, was an interpretation that
convincingly elucidated the compositional logic and
coherence of the work.
Throughout
his performance one couldn’t but admire the apparent
ease with which our distinguished visitor handled the often
excesssive technical demands.
Thunderous applause and a, for once well-deserved, standing
ovation resulted in a charming encore that brought a
truly
sensational
concert to a quiet and relaxed close.
_____________________
Fort Worth Star Telegram
| Wayne Lee Gay
Typical of a Jiracek performance, the repertoire itself
bespoke a pianist of remarkable stamina and range of
emotion, stretching from mentally demanding middle-period
Beethoven to the 20th-century mysticism of Oliver Messiaen,
and including muscles-stressing works of Schumann, Chopin
and Stravinksy.
Jiracek
met the challenge with his usual combination of
total technical control, expressive imagination and grasp
of form and structure, both within each of the four
movements and over the grand stretch of the whole piece. In
Jiracek's case, a firm central European approach, which can
deteriorate into a dry academicism, produces crystal-pure,
cosmopolitan musicality that lifts this music to a
universal level.
Jiracek molded his unassailable technique to his command of
musical architecture to build an impressive sweep of
emotions and color.
(...)
_____________________
NEW YORK TIMES
Cliburn
Piano Competition: A Loser Neither Bloody Nor
Unbowed
By ALLAN KOZINN
Just as the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano
Competition was heading into its final weekend in Fort
Worth, a star of the 1997 Cliburn, Jan Gottlieb Jiracek,
turned up at Alice Tully Hall to give
a dazzling performance
of the Liszt E flat major Concerto with the Riverside
Symphony. Mr. Jiracek was a favorite among critics and
other music professionals as well as with the audience in
1997, and he was the clear winner in an informal press room
poll, but the jury apparently thought otherwise. That he
was not awarded one of the top three prizes seemed proof
that the mechanisms for selecting the most original and
exciting players in competitions are fatally
flawed.
Mr. Jiracek seems none the worse for the experience. His
fresh, buoyant account of the Liszt on Thursday evening
created the illusion that this showpiece is a greater work
than it is. That isn't to say that he ignored the
showiness. In the opening bars he produced as grand a sound
as one could want and showed that the flair for dramatic
phrasing that was his hallmark in 1997 remains a central
part of his arsenal. Nor did he skimp on the fireworks in
the finale.
But there was more than that.
Mr. Jiracek knows when and how to let drama melt into
lyricism, or to transform a solid wall of piano sound into
a texture of crystalline clarity.
And his reading of the Allegro vivace was crisp, spirited
and enlivened by a subtle humor. The Riverside players,
with George Rothman on the podium, supported Mr. Jiracek
fully.
(...)
_____________________
DIE WELT (Germany)
A
Young Majesty at the Piano
Germany’s man at the piano, Jiracek joins the ranks
of a new generation of pianists who do not need to fear
comparison with pianists of the past.
_____________________
BERLINER MORGENPOST (Germany)
Where is Jiracek´s artistic home? The pianist answered this
question handily in his astonishing appearance in the
praiseworthy Philharmonic Series "Sundays at Four: Piano" -
everywhere from Bach to Messiaen.
_____________________
PIANOTIME (Magazine, Rome)
We would mandate someone like this in every trust to
perform the complete Beethoven sonatas.
JAN GOTTLIEB JIRACEK
Pianist
