Simon Smith

Pianist

You can hear (and sometimes see) me play on my YouTube channel. Here are a few places you could start:

• Pēteris Vasks The Seasons
• Karlheinz Stockhausen Piano Piece XII and Piano Piece XIII
• Stuart MacRae Piano Sonata No 2 (world premiere)
• Richard Wagner Prelude and Liebestod (arr Koscis/Moskowski)
• György Ligeti Etudes book 1 / book 2 / book 3 and the Piano Concerto
• Nikolai Medtner Russian Round Dance and Knight Errant (two pianos)
• Sergei Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances (two pianos)

My recordings on Delphian Records can be heard on Spotify or most other streaming services. You could even buy an actual CD if you want!

Some of these are solo recordings:

• Valentin Silvestrov Piano Sonatas
• Alfred Schnittke Complete Piano Music
• Hafliði Hallgrímsson Music for Solo Piano
• James MacMillan/Stuart MacRae Piano Works

And some are chamber/ensemble recordings with Red Note Ensemble:

• Jane Stanley Cerulean Orbits
• James Dillon Tanz/haus and Emblemata: Carnival
• David Wilde Chamber Music
• Eddie McGuire Entangled Fortunes
• John McLeod Moments in Time

I studied with the incredible Richard Beauchamp. Over the years I’ve done a lot of solo, chamber, ensemble and orchestral playing. I was typecast early on as a ‘modern music guy’ but I love playing Brahms and Beethoven at least as much.

Music engraver

I was head of the engraving team on MuseScore Studio from 2020–25 (versions 3.6 to 4.6).

Prior to that I did a lot of engraving for Boosey & Hawkes, including many works by Harrison Birtwistle (Angel Fighter, Violin Concerto, In Broken Images, Responses, The Corridor, The Moth Requiem, etc) and James MacMillan (Piano Concerto No 3, The Berserking, The Death of Oscar, etc). I also made piano reductions for concertos and vocal works, including Birtwistle’s opera The Minotaur.

My two biggest and most challenging projects, though, were for the Stockhausen-Verlag: a new performance edition of Mantra, and the first edition of the Soloists’ Version of Michaels Reise.

Composer

I used to write music occasionally. A few small pieces are on YouTube with scores:

• Avenir I / Avenir II (solo piano)
• Intermezzo (solo piano)
• Before the Dark (solo cello)

Contact

Feel free to send me an email.