SALZBURG, Austria – On consecutive nights here, two of the world’s leading baritones have given recitals. First was Thomas Hampson, from Spokane, and second was Dmitri Hvorostovsky, from Siberia. Patrons of the Salzburg Festival are in something like baritone heaven.

Mr. Hvorostovsky’s program consisted of Russian songs (the first half) and French ones (the second).The first half was decidedly more successful, but the second was not without charms.

Those Russian songs were by Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky, the Mussorgsky pieces being his “Songs and Dances of Death.” Accompanying Mr. Hvorostovsky was Ivari Ilja, an Estonian, and an excellent pianist. I will tell you something remarkable about him: All evening long, he would look at Mr. Hvorostovsky, when it was time to bow, and coordinate his own bows exactly with the singer’s. Uncanny. It was more precise than the Rockettes. Of course, you want an accompanist who can follow the principal.

The Russian song repertory is not exactly a cabaret. The first three Tchaikovsky songs were called “Night,” “Nights of Insanity,” and “Death.” In any event, if Mr. Hvorostovsky does not outright own this repertory, he is a co-owner of it.

His voice sounded especially beautiful in this venue, the Grosser Saal of the Mozarteum – more than in, say, the Metropolitan Opera House. It seemed wetter, lusher, more alive. Technically, he was extremely secure, as secure as I have ever heard him. Nice about Mr. Ilja – besides those bows – was that he was no wallflower, asserting himself where appropriate.

In “Nights of Insanity,” Mr. Hvorostovsky showed huge pathos, but did not break – he kept a lid on. He is not the sufferer; he is the singer, conveying the suffering. This, Mr. Hvorostovsky knows. And in the final Tchaikovsky song – “At Bedtime” – he achieved an unusual number of vocal shadings, making this piece even more of a heartbreaker.

Speaking of cheer – how about the “Songs and Dances of Death”? When I heard Olga Borodina, the great mezzo-soprano, sing them at Carnegie Hall last season, I said, “That’s it – I really don’t need to hear them again.” She sang them that well, that penetratingly. But I was wrong: Dmitri Hvorostovsky sang them just as well, just as penetratingly, if somewhat differently.

Among the baritone’s virtues was that he was even of voice, and that he was always in the center of the note. Why is this relevant to a cycle so psychologically powerful as this – these technical points? Because, with technique under control, interpretation can take over, or take off. It is the foundation on which to build. In these songs, Mr. Hvorostovsky’s judgment was superb, and, with that technical security, he could do whatever he wished. The body was servant to the mind.

In the second song, “Serenade,” Mr. Hvorostovsky produced tons of sound, but it was all unforced. The phrasing, the breathing, was particularly fine here. As for Mr. Ilja, his contribution throughout the cycle was solid, as in the militant storms he created at the beginning of “The Field Marshall.”

Mr. Hvorostovsky was more contained, and less theatrical, than Olga Borodina, but he was just as deadly in Mussorgsky’s terrible opus (and I mean “terrible,” of course, in the original sense).

Beginning the second half were five very well known songs of Henri Duparc, who in any case wrote very few songs. Mr. Hvorostovsky’s French is, shall we say – not the kind that you would hear in the Academie Francaise. But he gets by.

In Duparc’s “Phidyle” – one of the loveliest things in the French literature – the voice should float on the breath. Mr. Hvorostovsky’s did not. It rode heavily. Moreover, in his soft singing, he was husky (as on the key word “Repose”). And Mr. Ilja’s playing was more suited to Rachmaninoff than to this Impressionist – but at least he was unprissy.

In the next Duparc song, “Soupir,” Mr. Hvorostovsky could have done with far more pliancy, a quality that he often conspicuously lacks. In “Extase,” Mr. Ilja played the opening melody beautifully, but Mr. Hvorostovsky, on entering, forced some very unwise ritards. I wish Mr. Ilja had bucked him.

Soon enough it was time for Ravel’s “Don Quichotte a Dulcinee,” that three-song set beloved of baritones the world over, including by Mr. Hvorostovsky. In the first song – “Chanson romanesque” – Mr. Hvorostovsky managed to insert some insinuation, which he had seemed unable to do in the Duparc. And the next song, “Chanson epique,” was very well shaped. It meant new life for the recital, really. And the “Amen” at the end was heartfelt, if not pretty – better that it was heartfelt.

The set closed with a robustly tipsy “Chanson a boire.”

Encores were two, from two entirely different traditions: “Parlami d’amor, Mariu,” as Italian as red wine, and an unaccompanied Russian folk song. The first was stylish, dignified, and dear. The second? Too soulful for words. Too soulful for words.