The song recital of Piotr Beczała in the series Stars' Recitals with Piano features songs and arias by Karłowicz, Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninov. The partner of the Polish star tenor for the evening on 26 November 2023 is the internationally renowned pianist Helmut Deutsch.
Piotr Beczała has compiled a programme that ties in perfectly the 2023/24 Slavic Season of the Hungarian State Opera. In the first part, songs by 19th-century Polish composer Mieczysław Karłowicz, based on love poems by two contemporary poets, Kazimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer and Kazimierz Gliński as well as the cycle Zigeunerlieder by Antonin Dvořák, commissioned by the famous Viennese tenor Gustav Walter, in a German translation by the Czech poet Adolf Hejduk requested by the composer. In the second part of the concert, the excellent Polish tenor presents a Russian repertoire: love or melancholic poems by Goethe, Mei, A. Tolstoy, Pleshcheyev, Apukhtin, Beketova, Pushkin, and Tyutchev set to music by Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky and Sergey Rachmaninov. The recital also features arias from The Haunted Manor by Moniuszko, Rusalka by Dvořák, and Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky.
One of today's best-known international star tenors began his musical studies in his homeland and soon continued them in Switzerland. His career started in the opera houses of Linz and Zurich, but in the early 2000s, he gained fame with audiences of all major European theatres within a short time. In 2006, he also made his debuts at the San Francisco Opera and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where he has been a regular guest ever since. In addition to the beauty of his voice, he owes his popularity to the commitment he shows when portraying each role. In addition to his wide opera repertoire, he is a regular soloist in operettas and choral works as well. Several of his performances has been captured on audio recordings and films, and he regularly makes thematic recordings including his CD entitled Slavic Opera Arias which was declared the best recording of 2011 by Opera News. The audience of the Erkel Theatre had the chance to see an appearance of the Polish tenor at the beginning of his career in the role of the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's Rigoletto, and later, he returned to Budapest to perform at various opera galas.
His partner for the evening, Helmut Deutsch is one of the most sought-after and successful song accompanists in the world. Born in Vienna, he studied at the conservatory, and even during his student days, his main interest was focused on song, but he also worked as a chamber musician for several decades in all imaginable formations with many world-class instrumentalists. His international career as a song accompanist began with the soprano Irmgard Seefried, but the most important singer of his younger years was Hermann Prey, whose permanent partner he was for twelve years in several hundred concerts. He subsequently worked with many of the most important lieder singers and played in all the important music centres in the world. Currently, the singers Jonas Kaufmann, Diana Damrau, Michael Volle and the young Swiss tenor Mauro Peter are among his priority partners. Helmut Deutsch's work is documented on more than a hundred recordings. During his teaching career of more than three decades, his students included Juliane Banse, Jonas Kaufmann, Dietrich Henschel, Christian Gerhaher, and Wolfram Rieger.
