BBC MAGAZINE, "Who is who in music"
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.
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.
The Herald, South Africa
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
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.
(...)
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
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.
(...)
PIANOTIME (Magazine, Rome)
We would mandate someone like this in every trust to perform the complete Beethoven sonatas.
Kwazulu-Natal News
Following his hugely successful recital for the Friends of Music two days earlier, the German-Slovakian pianist Jan Jiracek gave a dazzling display when he appeared with the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra in the Durban City Hall. Jan Gottlieb Jiracek is an exceptionally gifted pianist and he has the kind of magnetism that establishes an immediate link with his audiences. To use an overworked word in its correct context, he has charisma.
Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major is a showpiece, of course, designed by the composer to show off his own prodigious abilities at the keyboard. But there is also plenty of poetry and emotion and passion in it, all of which was eloquently interpreted by Mr Jiracek. Amid all the fireworks there was nothing finer than his playing of the long romantic soliloquy for the piano at the start of the slow movement, in which he produced a most beautiful tone in the piano’s upper register. With a large audience there is usually some audible fidgeting or coughing at some point or another. This time you could have heard a pin drop, so rapt was the attention of the listeners.
Acknowledging the foot-stamping ovation, the pianist gave a nine-minute encore, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 in A minor, played again with poetry as well as virtuosity.
The orchestra, conducted by Croatian-born Alexander Kalajdzic, was an admirable partner with the pianist in the Liszt. (...) How fortunate we are to have live music of this quality in Durban.
We would mandate someone like this in every trust to perform the complete Beethoven sonatas.
Kwazulu-Natal News
Following his hugely successful recital for the Friends of Music two days earlier, the German-Slovakian pianist Jan Jiracek gave a dazzling display when he appeared with the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra in the Durban City Hall. Jan Gottlieb Jiracek is an exceptionally gifted pianist and he has the kind of magnetism that establishes an immediate link with his audiences. To use an overworked word in its correct context, he has charisma.
Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major is a showpiece, of course, designed by the composer to show off his own prodigious abilities at the keyboard. But there is also plenty of poetry and emotion and passion in it, all of which was eloquently interpreted by Mr Jiracek. Amid all the fireworks there was nothing finer than his playing of the long romantic soliloquy for the piano at the start of the slow movement, in which he produced a most beautiful tone in the piano’s upper register. With a large audience there is usually some audible fidgeting or coughing at some point or another. This time you could have heard a pin drop, so rapt was the attention of the listeners.
Acknowledging the foot-stamping ovation, the pianist gave a nine-minute encore, Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 13 in A minor, played again with poetry as well as virtuosity.
The orchestra, conducted by Croatian-born Alexander Kalajdzic, was an admirable partner with the pianist in the Liszt. (...) How fortunate we are to have live music of this quality in Durban.
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.
(...)
Home | Media | Contact
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.
(...)
Home | Media | Contact