Szilárd Benes is constantly on the lookout for new sounds with his instrument and goes to the outer limits of music, thus making collaboration with composers an important component of his creativity. His concerts have been recorded several times and broadcast on Ö1, as was his recording of Krzysztof Penderecki's clarinet quartet in Graz in 2012. He has also worked and made recordings with CD Labels such as Austrian Gramophone, Kairos, and Inexhaustible Editions. In 2018 he performed the solo clarinet part in La Chute d'Icare by Brian Ferneyhough.

Benes is the solo clarinetist of the Schallfeld Ensemble in Graz and Bass clarinetist of the Ensemble XX. Jahrhundert in Vienna. As a soloist and chamber musician with his own ensembles and with other well-known ensembles, like Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Phace, The Black Page Orchestra, Benes has been invited in Asia, Europe, and America to such international festivals and venues as the Salzburger Festspiele, Steirischer Herbst, IMD Darmstadt (Germany), Klangspuren Schwaz, Bregenzer Festspiele, Time of Music (Finland), Visiones Sonoras Festival (Mexico), Daegu International Contemporary Music Festival (South Korea), reMusik (Russia), SoW Milan (Italy), Wien Modern, ensems festival (Spain), ManiFeste (France), Wiener Festwochen, Gaudeamus Muziekweek (Netherlands), Jeunesse Vienna, Impuls, Novalis (Croatia), Sound of Stockholm (Sweden), Afekt Festival (Estonia), Poznań Musical Spring (Poland), Wiener Konzerthaus, and Carnegie Hall.

Benes has collaborated among others with the composers Beat Furrer, Brian Ferneyhough, György Kurtág, Pierluigi Billone. Together with Christof Ressi, he was selected to receive support from the Foreign Ministry's program "New Austrian Sound of Music 2020/21".