For her [Smyth’s mother’s] strongest gift was undoubtedly music; she was in fact one of the most naturally musical people I have ever known; how deeply so I found out in after years when she came to Leipzig to see me and I watched her listening for the first time to a Beethoven symphony, watched her face softening, tightening, relaxing again as each beauty I specially counted on went home. Old friends maintained that when she was young her singing would have melted a stone, which I can well believe; all the warm, living qualities that made her so lovable must have got into it. When I knew her she had almost lost her voice, but enough remained to judge of its strangely moving timbre. […]

She read at sight very well and her playing of dance music was gorgeously rhythmic. I can see her now, pince-nez on nose, rapping out the beloved old 'lancers/' leading up to the curtsey, gluing us for ever so long to the floor, and sending us flying back to our places with incredible accent and go. One used to wonder if the children she played for noticed how different it was to the performance of their own mamas, but I greatly doubt it.