Although the piano had a run during the Bathurst Eisteddfod, this will be the first time a concert pianist of this standard will sit down at the keyboard. 

Mr Sullivan will also be hosting master classes and private lessons through the Mitchell Conservatorium while in the city. 

This will give students and teachers the opportunity to learn from a man that Sudhessen Woche of Germany has described as “the finest interpreter of Mozart in the world”.

The piano was jointly purchased by the Mitchell Conservatorium, Bathurst Regional Council and the Bathurst Eisteddfod Society.

Mr Sullivan, who is Australia’s only resident full-time concert pianist, has given recitals in New York’s Carnegie Hall, as well as a number of opera houses and national concert halls worldwide. 

He said he was excited to be in Bathurst and was hoping people will come to support the piano’s first big public appearance. He stressed it is the music, not the performer, that is important.

“I am instrumental to the music itself,” he said.

Mr Sullivan said he started playing when he was 11 years old, which is quite late to be learning an instrument. He said he made phenomenal progress, although he didn’t realise it at the time.

Mr Sullivan said when he began full-time studies and played for his teacher for the first time, he looked at him in astonishment and said that he had an international career ahead of him.

“That was the moment for me,” he said.

“In my teens I was far more interested in composing. I just played the piano as an incidental.”

Mr Sullivan said the music is everything to him.

“During a performance I go into a trance and completely forget the audience is there,” he said.

“I just enjoy the music and get lost in it. That’s the ideal world for me.” 

Mr Sullivan will play Mozart in the second part of the program and Bach, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin in the first. He said he will be conducting the Mozart from the keyboard, the way Mozart would have done himself.

Mr Sullivan said he has great confidence in playing this complex program on the new piano, adding you never quite know what you will get when you travel to regional centres. Once he

performed on an upright piano which he found very challenging.

Tickets are available through the BMEC box office on 6331 6161, with adults $30, concession $20, a family of four $80, and school-age Mitchell Conservatorium students are free.