Johann Sebastian Bach is for Zhu Xiao?Mei the “reincarnation of a great Chinese wise man”. Bach plays a key role in her life – she is today one of the most significant interpreters of his music. The remarkable biography of this celebrated pianist gives her a unique position in the world of music. Her life has taken her from the re?education camps of the Chinese Cultural Revolution to Paris, where her international career as a pianist began rather late, but for that all the more successful. In Leipzig, where Bach held his final professional position and where he composed The Art of Fugue, Zhu Xiao?Mei recorded this contrapuntal masterpiece, which is for her “the absolute zenith of polyphonic art.” As she says, “The Art of Fugue exercises a total fascination on you. It’s like a magnet: you can’t detach yourself from it. It is music that opens the gates to an infinite world where time no longer exists; a world where beauty and peace reign supreme, detached from all earthly contingencies.“

“in her hands the austere fugal theme often grabs attention from within the texture with prominent weight (occasionally too forcibly), but this is tempered with flowing gentleness...Xiao-Mei is alert and forthright, taking the bull by the horns.” International Record Review