Jack Liebeck

The violinist Jack Liebeck has been one of the most promising young players on the British scene, combining charisma and solid technique in appearances that include high-profile film soundtracks as well as mainstream repertory recordings. Liebeck was born in London in 1980. His star quality was apparent as early as age ten, when he played the young Mozart in a BBC television program. Liebeck attended England’s Purcell School of Music and then the Royal Academy of Music, where his primary teacher was Mateja Marinkovic. He graduated from the Royal Academy in 2003. By that time it was clear that Liebeck showed special promise: his London recital debut at Wigmore Hall in 2002 was sold out and earned unusual critical acclaim. The recital propelled him to solo appearances not only with top British orchestras, but with ensembles all over Europe and the U.S., including the St. Louis and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestras. Liebeck has also been an energetic chamber music player, performing with top pianists such as Angela Hewitt, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, and Piers Lane. In 2013 he joined the Paris-based Trio Dali. In terms of listenership if not of immediate renown, two of Liebeck’s most important appearances were as violin soloist on the soundtracks to the films Jane Eyre (2011) and Anna Karenina (2012), both in scores written by Italian film composer Dario Marianelli. He has also performed a concert work by Marianelli, the Voyager Violin Concerto, which he has played in a lecture/concert setting with a physics professor. Liebeck’s own recording career began in 2002 with a program of violin-and-piano works, performed with Katya Apekisheva and released on the Quartz label. The small-label release earned a Classical Brit Award nomination, and he went on to win the award for his next album Dvorák, released on Sony Classical. Again collaborating with Apekisheva, he released an album of Fritz Kreisler’s music on the Hyperion label in 2014. He has remained with that prestige British imprint through the mid-2010s, releasing a series of acclaimed albums devoted to the music of Max Bruch, much of it, except for the heavily played Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26, historically neglected. A 2017 release in the series made a strong case for the Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor, Op. 44. ~ James Manheim