Asmik Grigorian’s Raw Passion Eclipsed Piotr Beczała’s Quiet Thunder at Carnegie Hall
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.
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 other times, quiet and contemplative sections caused him to pull back from his voice, leaving it flighty and hollow and us to chase after the core of his sound.
On pieces where he could open up without reservation—on the Grieg songs or during standout of the evening, “O you, my field” from Rachmaninoff’s Six Romances—his voice became more robust and his features more animated. Unlike the early pieces, he could bring himself to us with warmth, especially in the final six songs. Helmut Deutsch, frequent accompanist for the recitals of Jonas Kaufmann, delivered clear and determined playing that supported Beczała without pulling any focus from the tenor. The two artists work well together; the sound is professional and confident, but there’s no magical synergy.
Beczała’s program takes a tour of Romantic song and its various poetic obsessions—flowers and nature, longing, love that you hate to love—but kept its subject matter largely on the lighter side. It was well-programmed for vocal effect, as each set built to the highest emotional peak in the final two songs and was sung with increasing openness and richness.
The length of the program, the repetitiveness of the texts and the stylistic similarities of many of the composers flattened its emotional effectiveness overall, however, and made a rankings-type comparison nearly inevitable. The overwhelmingly passionate Rachmaninoff was a clear winner, both vocally and dramatically. The Grieg was hymnic, immediate and gentle, the Karłowic novel allowing for some heavier singing from Beczała, the Schumann nice but expected (though I never tire of “Widmung”), and the Tchaikovsky nice and somewhat less expected. Beczała and Deutsch are both highly competent artists, and this evening did little to push either of them. Beczała sang four encores, which were announced in a surprisingly soft voice and met with cheers of recognition. He knows where his bread is buttered.
Asmik Grigorian’s program in the smaller Zankel Hall, on the other hand, had about half as many pieces and was half again more effective. Like Beczała and Deutsch, Grigorian and Geniušas have recorded these works in the last year or so; they’ve been touring with this program, which is by now well-polished. Although some of the pieces overlapped with the Beczała concert, the overall mood was more intense—instead of flowers, Grigorian chose songs about loneliness, distance, and unfulfilled, bittersweet dreams. Each composer’s songs were divided by two solo pieces for Geniušas, a very fine accompanist who clearly won’t be content to play second fiddle.
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Grigorian, who recently appeared as Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera, has a dark, dimensional soprano sound and exceptional dramatic control over her instrument. Texts that felt flat on the page were infused with nuanced color, and familiar Romantic sentiments turned surprising in her voice. The Tchaikovsky selections began somewhat subdued, including Grigorian’s poignant rendition of the beloved “None but the Lonely Heart.” The isolation gave way to brief moments of Romantic expansiveness. A particularly striking number, “I bless you, forests,” Op.47, No. 5, began with a funereal introduction for Geniušas before Grigorian sang with palpable warmth of holding all nature in her own embrace.
Geniušas plays with an unusual weightiness; each note emerges as if it’s being pulled out of him with some reluctance on his part, like a forced disclosure that’s both desired and feared. It makes for extremely compelling stuff, as does the physicality of his playing. There was a moment in Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in D-flat Major, Op. 32, No. 13—the pianist’s final solo for the evening—where Geniušas nearly ejected himself out of his seat in the final bars. Both his work and Grigorian’s ensured that this program was more thoughtful and more feeling than Beczała and Deutsch’s: the playing rawer and more intense, the singing more eloquent and centered.
Tchaikovsky’s elegant melodies once again paled against the blazing fervor of Rachmaninoff. Here Grigorian, already sensitive interpreter, delivered each word like it was a tiny pearl of feeling, rounding them out with immediacy and capaciousness that brought the audience into her sound. A series of pristine, pianissimo B-flats were hair-raisingly beautiful, if chillier than the rest of her range. The final piece, a lengthier song called “Dissonance” that sees a speaker affirming her true love after being married to another man, had an aria-like emotional variety that synthesized Grigorian’s technical skill and generous phrasing with Geniušas’s simmering passion. After thunderous applause, the soprano only sang one encore, though she could have done three or even five more. She proved that she’s a real talent and a fully-realized star; now we only need to hear more of her in New York.