It was in 1956 that Smith suffered his stroke in Kharkov whilst touring the Ukraine. Many foreign tours courtesy of ENSA and the British Council took place. During the war, Smith performed concerts for ENSA, and in 1941 he and his wife began performing together as a piano duo at the Proms. In 1934, he left the BBC to take up an appointment as professor of piano at the Royal College of Music. In the early 1930s he worked for a while for the BBC, and it was there he met Phyllis Sellick the two married in 1937. In 1928, he won the Daily Express piano contest and a year later made his concert debut in Birmingham.
He studied piano with Herbert Fryer (a student of Tobias Matthay and Ferruccio Busoni) at the Royal College of Music, winning medals and prizes along the way. His 78-rpm solo recordings he set down in the previous twenty years have been largely forgotten, so this new release from APR, featuring them in their entirety for the first time, is more than welcome.Ĭyril Smith (1909-1974) hailed from Middlesbrough. The English pianist Cyril Smith is best remembered for his collaborations with his wife Phyllis Sellick in three-handed arrangements, post the devastating stroke he suffered in 1956 whilst in the city of Kharkov in Ukraine at the start of a concert tour of the Soviet Union. Support us financially by purchasing from
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