Romantic Discoveries Recordings

Piano music of Sydney Smith (1839-89)
Original works and paraphrases
John Kersey, piano
RDR CD24

Total time: 64 mins 2 secs

1) Reminiscence de Bruges (Le Carillon) – Esquisse, op 55 (6’15”)
2) The Spinning Wheel, op 39 (4’31”)
3) Second Fantasia on Flotow’s “Martha”, op 119 (7’23”)
4) Maypole Dance: A Rustic Sketch, op 45 (4’31”)
5) Barcarolle, op 88 (7’12”)
6) Paraphrase de concert on Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, op 76 (9’16”)
7) Brilliant fantasia on “The Hardy Norseman”, op 5 (4’44”)
8) Paraphrase on Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, op 108 (13’59”)
9) En route – Marche brilliante, op 132 (5’20”)

Edward Sydney Smith was one of the most celebrated English pianist-composers of his day. He studied with Moscheles and Reitz in Leipzig and after returning to England in 1858 built a highly successful concert career. Smith’s concerts were almost all sold-out events. He would begin a concert with works of Beethoven, Liszt or Chopin, then introduce his latest compositions, and conclude with his established favourites as demanded by the audience.

Smith’s virtuosic pianistic style is directly influenced by Moscheles and in particular by Mendelssohn, whom he much admired. His transcriptions tend to owe a greater debt to Thalberg than to Liszt, and are often highly inventive and pianistically effective. In later works a more personal style is evident, and his melodic gift recalls contemporaries such as Sullivan (particularly in the Barcarolle, op 88).

Smith’s early death from cancer, after several years of straitened circumstances, led to his legacy being forgotten, particularly by those who were opposed to the virtuoso tradition for political reasons in the wake of World War I. Now we have the opportunity to enjoy again music that delighted our forebears and that constituted a genuinely English piano tradition of the nineteenth-century.