Keeping her concerts few and far between, Zhu Xiao-Mei appears in public only to perform especially demanding repertoire which she judges essential and for which she has refined her interpretations over a long period of time. But though she is now playing with some of the most renowned orchestras and giving concerts everywhere in Europe, Asia and America, her career very nearly never happened. Introduced to music by her mother at a very early age, she was already appearing on radio and television by the time she was eight. At the age of ten she entered the Beijing Conservatory, where her brilliant studies were interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. She was sent to a re-education camp on the border of Inner Mongolia for five years. However, thanks to people sympathetic to her situation, she was eventually able to continue playing the piano.
On returning to Beijing, she completed her studies at the Conservatory, and left China as soon as the régime gave its first signs of opening up to the outside world. In 1980 she emigrated to the United States, then in 1984 she decided to make Paris her home. Since then, Zhu Xiao-Mei’s career has taken flight, going against all trends and fashions. She gives concerts all over the world, focusing on a reper toire which she limits to a few composers she cherishes above all others: Scarlatti, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann. At its very centre is Bach and his great cycles: The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Partitas and the Goldberg Variations — which she has given in recital more than two hundred times — as well as The Art of Fugue.
Her autobiography La Rivière et son secret, published by Editions Robert Laffont (Paris) in 2007, was awarded the Grand Prix des Muses in 2008 and has been translated into many languages. Regularly invited to participate on international piano juries, Zhu Xiao-Mei teaches at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris.
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