Vinyl:
Bach’s “French Suites” now available on Vinyl

After the huge success of the CD and digital release, the recording with Chinese pianist Zhu Xiao-Mei is now available on double-LP.

It is with children in mind that I recorded these French Suites, always having heartfelt simplicity and purity in their mind. Children see the world with hope, optimism, and cast in light – much like Miró sees the world. I find a childlike purity in him, similar to what I hear in the French Suites.

There is a quote by Miró that touches me enormously and makes me think a lot whenever I play, as it reflects something that may be the most difficult aspect of musical interpretation – and of art in general: „To gain freedom is to gain simplicity.“
-- Zhu Xiao-Mei

This recording of the French Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach is the fourth release of Zhu Xiao-Mei on the Accentus Music label. It has received many accolades and the Supersonic Award by Pizzicato Magazine, which states: “Zhu Xiao-Mei’s Bach performances belong to the very best ones. After a very eventful and not always beautiful life, the Chinese pianist seems to have found the way to the light in Bach’s music. Nobody plays Bach in a purer, more unaffected and unpretentious way. The combination of this simplicity, of an overwhelming beauty, of depth and transcendence is simply breath-taking.”

Zhu Xiao-Mei and Accentus Music will continue their collaboration with a recording of Bach’s "English Suites" by the end of this year.

Recorded at the Mendelssohnsaal of the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, May 2016

ACC40404 (Double-LP), ACC30404 (CD)

Composer Johann Sebastian Bach
Soloist Zhu Xiao-Mei
English title of music work The French Suites BWV 812-817