Tenor Piotr Beczała and pianist Helmut Deutsch. Photo: Chris Lee

It was a good week for Russian song at Carnegie Hall, where two concerts by vastly different artists featured overlapping repertoire from Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff. The first, from tenor Piotr Beczała and pianist Helmut Deutsch, saw an otherwise extroverted performer shift to intimacy. The second, from soprano Asmik Grigorian and pianist Lukas Geniušas, turned intimacy outwards.

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Beczała’s program, given in the Stern Auditorium, was bookended by the works of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, many of which appear on an album of romances by those composers recorded with Helmut Deutsch last year. He also included songs from Edvard Grieg, Robert Schumann and Mieczysław Karłowicz, a lesser-known Polish composer who died at thirty-two.

Beczała excels at passionate, extroverted repertoire. Now 57, Beczała has retained a youthful air, and his voice sounds well cared for. He has a confident swagger and a large, outgoing sound best suited for declarations of love or boasts of conquest. The more intimate lieder genre does not always suit him, however. While some of his softer moments were nicely rounded, at........

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