Svetlana Smolina is a triple threat: in-demand performer, recording artist, and acclaimed educator.  

Her airline points must be at gob smacking levels as she is on the road for about half the year for concerts, combining those trips with teaching seminars, master classes and private lessons to aspiring pianists all over the world. When not in a concert or classroom setting (she’s on the piano faculty at Irvine Valley College and London Performing Academy of Music,) she’s in the recording studio – she released two albums in 2024 alone.  

PIMF is proud to have her with us every June as Piano Program Director, offering instruction, insights, and endless inspiration.  

She talked with us about her busy life and her very busy mind! Svetlana shared her thoughts with joy and generosity. 

So how did you find yourself at the keyboard instead of any other instrument in the music universe?  

Well, my mom is a theory professor at the music school, so she brought me with her to school. As I heard music around me and went to a first concert, I fell in love with it instantly. 

And how old were you like when you formally started studying the piano?  

I was six when I started lessons in music school. 

Do you play any other instruments? 

Piano is enough fun to explore for a lifetime. (Laughs.)  It has the potential to sound like any solo instrument or sound like a full symphony, plus the ability to sound like a human voice. However, I also play the organ and sing.  

Why and how does it help a musician on any other instrument to be able to play piano?  

I think this is pretty important, because it gives you an overall perspective of how your piece sounds within its full harmonic structure, because whenever you play – let’s say, any instrumental sonata or perform a vocal piece – your other duet partner would be a pianist.   Whenever you play any concerto on any instrument – the orchestra part is usually played on the piano in the orchestral reduction version. So, in order to have a better perspective and an overall image and an idea of how your piece sounds, and in order to understand its architectural structure – the piano would be the first instrument on which one can create the full texture, the vision of the piece.  

So, usually any musician is required to take a piano as their secondary instrument in their studies.  Playing the piano is important or almost essential when you are a composer or a conductor.  I know most of the greatest conductors do play piano, as well as many great solo instrumentalists. I think it’s essential for your mind to understand the overall picture of what you play.  When you’re a soloist, you are part of a universe of other various sounds happening and coexisting together with your solo line. The soloists are like a big bright star living inside another fuller and essentially richer universe of millions of various combinations of surrounding sounds. The ability to play the piano provides you with a clearer picture of how your line lives and feels inside the divine music universe.  

Okay, so you have played everywhere, it seems. Favorite concert hall?  

I don’t have a favorite hall, as I don’t have a favorite composer, because I’m a very “in the moment” kind of person. Whatever, wherever I am on the day of a performance, or on any given day, I give myself fully, emotionally to the place I’m in. So, at PIMF, it’s this festival. The next week it could be a different hall. Of course, I love the halls with fantastic acoustics, and when there is an amazing piano on stage.  Like last year’s tour to China, in many, many cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Harbin and any of those cities, we had A-plus halls with more than 3000-people capacity, fantastic pianos.  

And you immensely enjoy the moment when you come to the stage. We have this expression, “when the piano plays by itself.”  When the piano is in such a perfect condition that it gives you both musically and technically even more than what you hoped for, when you are able to create sounds and feelings on stage which were before existing only in your dreams, in the imagination. You just feel when you catch this magical moment on stage when nothing stands between you and your audience – and you can create the spiritual dialogue between you two. It’s the ideal condition when it happens. And of course, such halls as Carnegie Hall, or LaScala, Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome, or Beijing National Performing Arts Center are always in my most special memories from playing there.  

But the audience that comes to the hall also plays a huge role in how we performers remember the concerts. Sometimes the hall will not even feel as special if you feel that communication with the audience was somehow off. Luckily, it hasn’t happened too many times with me, but when it does, you immediately feel it. It becomes emotionally more draining to play instead of the usual exhilarating, exciting, fulfilling feeling of a real connection with the hall.  During most concerts your audience response gifts you with incredible inspiration and a huge boost of creative energy.  So, I think that how we remember the halls, concerts, and what we feel in the moment is both very emotional and rational in a way. It doesn’t need to be a big hall; it just has to be a fulfilling communication between you and the audience.  When you change and enrich the emotional state of mind for your audience towards a more positive and memorable one. The concert is a spiritual and emotional energy exchange environment.  This is what’s important for me, because then I feel the same way in return. 

How do you find audiences differ around the world?  

Yeah, of course. In Asia the applause can be very enthusiastic and long. In South America, people can go wild and crazy at the concerts. And in Europe, many countries also differ in their applause, depending on their culture. Some audiences are more conservative than others, but it does not mean they are less appreciative. It’s just a different culture.  But still no matter where you are, the most engaging thing for the audience is the performance itself. If the performance is full of fire, 100 percent giving and very exciting, it just will bring you in.  You can electrify basically a dead person, if you’re playing with your entire heart and soul and giving it your all. So, the main thing is communicating the correct energy to the audience in the concert space, and then you can touch the heart of anyone in any country. And that’s what I’ve been blessed with. Some of the concerts had amazing, memorable ovations, and as we call it, the “third part of the concert,” an autograph signing with long waiting lines that would stretch past the side of the building. That’s a really wonderful, rewarding feeling when your art makes a difference. 

Now, it is live entertainment, and things can go wrong with live entertainment. Any stories about something that just went sideways, and you had to adjust, and how do you do it?  

Well, I have a lot, so I can’t put it all in one! Once I had a crazy dress rehearsal, not a concert luckily, but I played a full cycle of 24 Chopin preludes, and I was just at the end of the last prelude which finishes with a very intense dramatic passage running all the way down to the bass keys.  By the time I arrived at that last note of D, the left front piano leg broke and the piano half collapsed, it literally felt down on me!  I barely had a second to jump out from underneath the piano.  Thank God, they had another piano to choose from, to replace the broken one for the concert. That was probably one of the craziest dress rehearsals.  

Another one was when I burned my entire finger with boiling hot water on a train, just a few hours before the rehearsal of Tchaikovsky’s 2nd piano concerto with the symphony orchestra. The doctors at the trauma hospital where I was immediately brought upon arrival told me my finger had to be amputated to avoid infection! I said NO, there must be another way, and that I’m playing a concert in a few days to which I’m inviting all my ER doctors! So, they found another way to treat my finger, and I played the concert and all the rehearsals with the numbing medication injected into my finger by a doctor standing behind the stage. That concert went pretty successfully!  I even have a video recording from it on YouTube when you can clearly see my third finger wrapped in a huge white bandage… 

And another insane moment on stage that I can share – there were SO many !!! – was when I played a concert in a very big city, I won’t say which. It was a concert of Scriabin music, and they were going to do a special stage effects with lights, but the lights were not tested with me in the dress rehearsal.  I was playing the Scriabin Fantasy in B Minor, Op. 28 and I was told I would get a purple, blue light for my piece, because that’s the color of the B minor key. (Shrugs.) 

And so, I come on stage expecting that the lights will go on. I can barely see the stage floor or the piano because it was all so dark, no lights whatsoever, and as I sit down at the piano, I can’t really differentiate even the white keys from black keys because – no lights! So, I sit and wait, I’m ready…okay, the lights should come up now. And then I saw this little, little projector of shimmering light. It was a dark purple color, but it didn’t even reach my keyboard! So, after a minute of waiting I finally figured that I just have to play this piece in the darkness! Thankfully, I have a habit of practicing with closed eyes, so I did it.  

There are many, many others: travel-related stories when planes were so delayed or rerouted because of the weather that you would end up landing at a different airport, and you would have to drive a car in the middle of night or just an hour before the stage, and with added jet lag no matter how tired you are from the trip you still have to be ready to play your best anyway. These things happen often, and you have to be ready for this if you choose to be a performing artist. And that’s the exciting part of our profession. You never know what to expect and you sometimes even rediscover yourself in stressful situations like that, it makes you grow as an artist and get inspired for your next chapter.  

Is there a concert hall or a city or a country where you want to perform? 

Probably… Hmm. Australia.  

In a regular year, on average, how much time do you spend on the road?  

It really depends. But it’s not unusual to be away from home for 2 months at a time. Then I’ll be home for a few days or weeks and be off again. It’s in and out, I usually go every month somewhere. Sometimes it’s short lived, sometimes a week or two. I would say 50% I’m away from home.  

So how did you get into teaching? 

Teaching was an important part in our education. Usually, you always have to take a teaching course in your piano studies, and in every college when you get a full scholarship you are expected to teach private one on one lessons with students or to teach a group class. So, it all started from those school assignments. But then, as I worked with my piano professors and played more and more concerts I learned new perspectives on piano technique, on how the sound production on the piano works, on how to think, how to better prepare myself, and how to solve any problems in a fast and efficient way – both musical and technical ones- and  with my all concert experience that’s when I got really interested in teaching. I realized that I can help students with my knowledge. 

I discovered that when a student comes to me, I can share with them my experiences which really work and give results. Also, I love psychology, I read books on that, so I can say that I can, in most cases, almost sense or see how students think when they perform. So that I can help students by encouraging them to quickly change or to reroute some negative thoughts into a more positive, productive and creative mindset.   

I also love teaching   because I learn also from my students. Like. it’s always a both-ways experience. I learn from them; they learn from me.  I totally love it. You set up a positive energy flow in the lesson when you receive the energy and inspiration back. So, I truly enjoy teaching at PIMF.   

 What are the kinds of things that a student will teach you, the teacher? 

Well, they’re all the younger generation.  When I compare them to myself at that age, I see how much more advanced they are, in a way, what resources they have now, what information they can get about any given piece. They can now listen to so many different recordings to compare, read any possible existing information surrounding a composer, a piece or a performance. They have incredible endless possibilities nowadays to play for different musicians, to participate in so many master classes or competitions.  This open, modern perspective of the mind and limitless access to the information allows them to take more risks in their careers or on stage. At PIMF, we have many performances in our concerts where students take really great, sometimes extreme risks, and it’s just a constant reminder for me that it’s great to be and to stay young and exciting as a performer and to always learn.  

You’ve taught all over the world too, because you perform and then you do seminars and such —  are young musicians different around the world? 

They all have different backgrounds, but the connection is usually instant through our common language of music. Perhaps in Asia, kids would be a little bit shyer when they first come to a class, but it is only because they feel tremendous respect towards their professors.  I treat all the students the same way, no matter what their background or level.  So, I think young people are all united nowadays by the “discovery–do your best -risk it no matter what” motto.  

How many languages do you speak? And is English like the third or fourth at this point?  

 English, Russian, French, and I also learned some Italian.   

But music is itself, its own language.  

Music is the most unique universal language. It can speak without words; no translation needed, and unite people anywhere in the world.  

You’ve taught at PIMF for 12 years, students travel from all over the world to work with you. Why do you enjoy these students so much? 

Knowing that PIMF makes a huge difference in students’ musical life is the most special aspect for me. 

Also special for me is to see how much the piano program has grown in the past 12 years. We now get incredibly strong pianists entering the piano program every year, who win PIMF competitions consistently almost every year.  And most importantly, to see how each piano student grows and becomes a more confident musician in the course of their PIMF studies, and they fall entirely in love all over again with piano playing and music making in the course of just one or two weeks of their studies while at PIMF. 

So, to ignite that special light of love for music making, to widen students’ musical horizons, to make them want to go with music as their main career choice in the future – is very special for me. 

To see their growth as a musician from lesson to lesson and how much more open and confident and sincere and deep their playing becomes from Day One of PIMF until their final PIMF performance. 

Also, many of my piano students keep in touch with me after PIMF as they continue their professional music lives, and almost all of them say that their lessons at PIMF made an enormous impact in their journey and in their decision of becoming a professional  musician. 

Okay, something about Svetlana that we would be surprised to know. 

I love sports. I think it’s important to stay fit and healthy, because our work as a performer is in a way athletic. You have to be in a conditioned body to keep up with traveling schedules and stay organized to keep your mind and body healthy. And I also love to play chess and pool or billiards!  

I also graduated from math and science school together with music, so thanks to that my mind is artistic but also structural in a way. And I love to play any challenging mind games.  

How many gowns do you own? 

I could get another house for all of them!  It’s like with music; sometimes you play or wear something new and then you would not return to it for a year; to come back to it I need to be feel inspired by color or its style. Sometimes I like the color, but I’m not inspired by the style of a dress anymore, and it takes me years to get back to a dress. It’s like a person, like a relationship, you have to have the connection. And sometimes I choose my gowns by the color ambiance of the hall or its seats. Really, I just Google, what are the seat colors in a hall, or the design elements of the space.  And choose accordingly.  

Just to touch on sports again — how should a young pianist take care of their hands? 

I think, anything with catching balls would be bad for your wrist and you have to be very careful playing any games involving wrist pressure. Even big tennis. I used to take tennis classes, but then I had to completely stop because my wrists would hurt after training. Anything that hits the wrist with a lot of pressure can be irreversibly damaging for the pianists. Anything repetitive, too, like, with any repetitive motion, the computer mouse continuously, is a bad stress on your wrist.  

Reading interesting books, going to wonderful museums, doing healthy sports such as jogging, swimming, walking, light weights, body conditioning, yoga, and having a lot of fun while achieving your clearly set goals – could be the key to healthy hands. Traveling to interesting and inspiring places, playing concerts or listening to them, having good times with your family, constantly educating yourself, spending time with great friends and inspiring people – are some of the keys to happy successful playing!