British pianist Viv McLean's second release on Stone Records is a collection of live recordings taken from performances at the Wigmore Hall and at the ACT City Concert Hall in Japan. It features a wide variety of repertoire - the beautiful and elegiac Bach Prelude and Fugue in E flat minor, BWV853, Brahms's rich and powerful Rhapsodies, op.79, the spiky rhythms and folk-like melodies of Medtner's Fairy Tale, op.8 no.2, the fiendishly virtuosic “Mazeppa” from Liszt's Transcendental Etudes and one of the greatest of all piano works - Schubert's deeply profound final Piano Sonata in B flat, D960.

First prize winner at the Maria Canals International Piano Competition in Barcelona, Viv has performed in many of the world’s major venues and with orchestras such as the RPO, Philharmonia Orchestra, LPO, Hallé Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra under the baton of such conductors as Daniel Harding, Wayne Marshall, Christopher Warren-Green, Owain Arwell Hughes, Carl Davis and Marvin Hamlisch. He has collaborated with many musicians including Natalie Clein, Daniel Hope, Lawrence Power, David Le Page, Mary Bevan and Guy Johnston and with groups such as the Adderbury Ensemble, Leopold String Trio, Ensemble 360, the Ysaÿe Quartet, the Sacconi String Quartet and members of the Elias, Allegri and Tippett String Quartets.

“Viv McLean revealed extraordinary originality, superb simplicity, and muscles of steel hidden by fingers of velvet. He plays with the genius one finds in those who know how to forget themselves, naturally placing themselves at the right point to meet the music, this mystery of the moment” - Le Monde