A PIANO with an illustrious past is soon to arrive at the the University of Sussex - thanks to a donation from Genesis member Tony Banks.

The Steinway ‘D236’ featured in The Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in 2013 and 2014 and has been played by Ludovico Einaudi, who wrote the soundtrack for TV series This is England, and James Horner, who wrote the soundtracks for Titanic and Avatar.

It has been bought by the University with a donation from Mr Banks, a composer and member of the rock group Genesis and a Sussex alumnus, and will be delivered on April 28 and set up in the newly refurbished Attenborough Centre.

The purchase went ahead after the piano was given a test run by University of Sussex music professors Martin Butler and Ed Hughes.

They gave an impromptu recital of pieces by Debussy and Bach at Steinway Hall in London, where the piano received a new set of higher register strings and its bodywork was restored to showroom standards.

Professor Butler said: “It has an incredible power. The higher notes have a pearly sound that blossoms and hangs. The lower notes hold their purity, no matter how loudly they are played. Sussex has never had a concert grand like this before.”

The piano was hand-built in the Steinway factory in Hamburg in 2010 and, at 2m 74cm, is the longest of the models produced by the 163-year-old business. Although the instruments are built to the same original design, the method of construction means that each piano has its own individual sound.

Tony Banks, who was taught piano from the age of seven, has been credited with giving Genesis its distinctive sound of unusual chords and chords sequences. He began a degree in chemistry at Sussex in 1968 but left after a year as his music career began to take off.

He said: “I wrote a lot at Sussex and it was a really creative period for me. It was also the time when I first started to get more seriously into classical music.

“I would like to have finished my course and I do rather miss that more academic side of life, but the music was a very big calling, and having the opportunity to explore it was just too important.”

The piano’s first public outing will be for the Music department’s Final Year Recital Exam Recitals on 31 May 2016.