CYRIL SMITH
English pianist (1909 - 1974)

Cyril Smith was the son of a foundry bricklayer.  He studied at the Royal College of Music under Herbert Fryer who had been a pupil of Tobias Matthay and Ferruccio Busoni.  Actually, the words used in both cases were "had some some lessons with".  And yet this flower bloomed under what might have been called the most unlikely of circumstances.

He married the esteemed British pianist Phyllis Sellick, a brilliant pianist in her own right, with whom he performed four hand piano misic.  In 1956 he suffered a stoke that paralysed his leftt arm. Thereafter the couple continued to perform, arranging music for three hands.  On this page is a very lovely performance of the Schubert Fantasy in F minor for three hands they made shortly befire his death.

A number of important composers composed works especially for them including Sir Malcolm Arnold, Sir Arthur Bliss, Gordon Jacob, Lennox Berkeley and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Works for piano (three hands) and orchestra by Arnold and Jabob are included below.

Cyril Smith's Chopin Barcarolle is very beautiful, and the contrasting sections in the scherzo are really interesting if not my ideal approach to playing this music.  His Rachmaninoff is stunning.  And the performance of the Dohnanyi masterpiece, one of the greatest of musical parodies, is sensational.

And there is a Chopin Nocturne performed by Cyril Smith and three other pianists, Murdoch, Rubinstein and Cortot.  I must say that inspite of gems by Cortot and the Rubinstein of the 1930s when his most glorious recordings were made, I find Smith's performance irresistable.

Bach  "Ertöt uns durch dein Güte" from BWV 22