Photo:  Martha S

July 15, 2000

de Volkskrant

Stylish Maestro On Worldwide Roll
by Peter de Graaf

Andre Rieu (Marcel van den Bergh / de Volkskrant) 

When actor Huub Stapel in the early eighties graduated from the theater academy of Maastricht  a little string band played at the prom.   It was the Maastricht Salon Orchestra of Andre Rieu. A string band, very nice indeed, but nobody really listened.   We had something else to do. "

Today Rieu attracts full stadiums, sometimes thirty or forty thousand fans from Melbourne to Las Vegas, cramped, clapping and crying. Tonight he closes the series of five concerts in Maastricht Vrijthof  all of which sold out.

"He matches the biggest pop stars," says Mayor Gerd Leers of Maastricht, which Rieu counts as his friend (we are together at home ')  "He is on the cover of Time Magazine. Rieu is a phenomenon. He is the main ambassador of the city. Wherever it occurs, he says where he comes from. "

Rieu was born and raised in Maastricht, occupies a castle on the Maas, River at St. Pierre, where he has his office. With his Johann Strauss Orchestra he travels around the world. He has just returned from a tour of the United States. At the end of last year he triumphed  in Australia, a tour in which even a reality soap was made.

Rieu plays the violin, not only in his orchestra of forty to fifty persons, but also in  André Rieu Productions with a total of 150 staff.  He does everything  with his wife Marjorie and son Pierre, but has no manager or supervisor.

"He would always put himself in his own hands," says Jo Corte Raedt, editor of the glossy Limburgse Chapeau! who Rieu has known in private business for 25 years.. "The death of Michael Jackson told me told me he as against this: now you see something tragic with him and Elvis has happened. Great talents are a victim of managers."

André Léon Marie Nicolas Rieu (1949) comes from a musical family. His father, Andre Rieu Sr., was conductor of the Limburg Symphony Orchestra. The classical music was with Andre and his two older sisters, two brothers and younger sister.  She sat as a child in front of the concerts of their father, played harp, violin, cello or piano. Pop music was not tolerated in the Rieu home;  no Beatles or Stones, but Mozart and Stravinsky.

In his fifth year Andre already started to play violin, and he never stopped. After high school he continued violin lessons with a violin course at the Conservatory in Liège and later in Maastricht  under Jo Juda and Herman Krebbers.  Later he went to the Conservatory in Brussels. During his studies he married his childhood love Marjorie, who was 26, two years older.

After training Andre came to the orchestra of his father. But the solemnity and elitist nature of the classical orchestra was not his thing. He found the distance between him and the audience too great. . He missed the emotion of the concert, with all people who behave nicely. " "If you coughed, they look disturbed," he said afterwards.

Ed Spanjaard, the current conductor and guest conductor in the eighties of the Limburg Symphony Orchestra,  describes Rieu as "an always stylish, agile, highly critical 'man.  You felt that to him the relatively conformist atmosphere of the classical orchestra was not his passion. "

Rieu says that as a child he was already fascinated by the violin, all bowing in the same direction back and forth.  "I loved it but It surprised me with all the gloomy atmosphere during the concerts. Everyone looked so serious, there could no be laughing when the music brought so much joy."

Rieu was no second fiddle. He wanted to play first violin in his own way, playful, happy, less solemnity. He felt really miserable in the orchestra of his father and was looking for a way out.

Besides working as a second violinist with the LSO, he founded the Maastricht Salon Orchestra, a five-person string band, which played mainly at parties in the region. ' he did it since that is what he wanted to do "said Spanjaard.   But the orchestra was in Maastricht  and became renowned for its traditional Hieringebiete concert on Ash Wednesday, when everyone was still under the influence of the carnival.

His wife Marjorie, a teacher, supported him fully. "He was at that time barely beyond the outskirts of Maastricht. For 1,000 guilders, you could book him, "says Corte Raedt, also a former correspondent of the Telegraaf. "His wife called me for a small piece in the weekend Saturday Annex;  they kept insisting. "

Rieu also finally got some success outside Limburg, especially in Germany.  In 1987 he developed increasingly as Stehgeiger, violin artist  together with his Johann Strauss Orchestra as successor to the salon orchestra, who in the beginning had only twelve members. A year later he felt strong enough to completely sever his work as a violinist with the LSO.

The big breakthrough came in 1994 when he released the album Strauss & Co, with the Second Waltz by Shostakovich. The melancholic waltz was a direct hit. He played the song a year later in the Olympic Stadium during the rest of Ajax - Bayern Munich. In 1996, the modern waltz king won his first Monte Carlo World Music Award, alongside stars such as Michael Jackson and Diana Ross.

He had a studio building in Maastricht, toured Japan and North America and opened an office in New York. After concerts in Europe, he always flew with his own plane back to Maastricht.

In 2006  during a performance at Schloss Schönbrunn in Vienna he was so impressed that he decided to make a replica of the Sissi Palace. Since then, he travels around with what is  the largest movable scenery in the world and is referred to as more than 125 meters wide, 30 meters deep and 35 meters high, complete with ballroom, skating rinks and fountains.

His youngest son, Pierre, in 2002 joined the company as the technical production manager. "He wants the world rolling," said Pierre on the unlimited ambitions of his father. Last year was Australia's turn. Overall, the promotion came down under as a real-Rieu madness. He was the first artist with nine DVDs in the top ten. The transport of the immense palace Sissi was a costly affair - according Rieu even money, he should concentrate on - but the CD and DVD sales were very good.

Last year Rieu was the only classical artist in the top ten Worldwide Touring Acts (Poll Star list). He sold 71 shows 700 thousand tickets worldwide, accounting for nearly 77 million dollars and eighth place. The places one through three were taken by Madonna, Celine Dion and Bon Jovi.

Worldwide Rieu has now 27 million CDs and DVDs sold. So immensely popular as he is, in circles of the 'real' classical music they have little time for him.

"Jealousy is the motive" notes Mayor Leers". "He is a greatness in his genre. It is his strength that has developed to a peak, "says conductor Spanjaard.  But 'real' classical music has little to do with it'. "It is a different genre," said Spanjaard.