| Biography | Cyril James Smith OBE (11 August 1909 2 August 1974) was a virtuoso concert pianist of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, and a piano teacher.He was born in , Middlesbrough, England, the son of Charles Smith, a foundry bricklayer, and Eva Harrison, and had an older brother and sister. Cyril married Andrée Antoinette Marie Paty in 1931 but the marriage ended in divorce. In 1937 he married Phyllis Sellick. Cyril and Phyllis's recreational activities included long walks and sailing. They had a son and a daughter and remained married until his death. He died in 1974 at his home in East Sheen, London, the result of a stroke.
Cyril Smith studied with Herbert Fryer from 1926 to 1930 at the Royal College of Music, winning medals and prizes including the Daily Express piano contest in 1928 and made his concert début in Birmingham in 1929. Cyril Smith performed as an off-screen piano accompanist in several of the 30-line Baird system television broadcasts of 1935 and joined the BBC when they took over. It was at the BBC's early television studios that he met his second-wife-to-be pianist Phyllis Sellick. In 1934 Cyril left the BBC to take up an appointment as professor of pianoforte at the Royal College of Music. Cyril and Phyllis married in 1937 pursuing solo careers. During the second world war Cyril performed concerts for ENSA but in 1941 he and his wife began performing together as a piano duo at the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts making many international concert tours for ENSA and the British Council touring the Far East in 1945 where the hazards to contend with included small animals lodged in pianos and out-of-tune instruments. |