EénVandaag start the new season of The Week ... with violinist / conductor Andre Rieu. Earlier this year he has toured the U.S. and later this year he is already in Australia and New Zealand. But this weekend he is with 60 skaters from Holiday on Ice in a lifelike copy of the Vienna Schönbrunn Palace in the Amsterdam Arena.


Andre Rieu is preparing in this busy week for the two concerts and EénVandaag is taking. We follow the best selling male artist in the world during the rehearsals and in his home to his castle and in his studio in Maastricht. What drives this man who lives in a large palace attracts the world, has serious plans in the Arctic to give a concert in between and still find time to play a role in the series Cops Maastricht?

Peace Concert in the Middle East?

Andre Rieu said in the broadcast that he wants to give a concert in the Middle East. He is thinking of Egypt. "Palestinians, Israelis, they all need to come." Rieu made this statement in a business discussion with the Canadian / Egyptian singer Chantal Chamandy the entrepreneur and her husband Greg Chamandy. Rieu had also already know longer play with the idea. He hopes the good relations of the couple Chamandy to find a location in Egypt. Preferably near the pyramids.

"I mean it." Rieu, who is married to a Jewish woman, insists that he does not want to choose the conflict.

Andre Rieu (1949) began playing the violin at age five and never stopped. As a classically trained musician, he began in his father's orchestra, but soon founded his own salon orchestra that later became the Johann Strauss Orchestra.

His big breakthrough came in 1994 when he released the album Strauss and Co., showing the Shostakovich Second Waltz. The melancholic waltz was a hit. He played the song one years later in the Olympic Stadium, while the rest of Ajax - Bayern München.Sindsdien was soon gone. Not only he toured Europe, but also Japan, North America, Australia and New Zealand won it by storm.

In 2006 he was at a concert in Schloss Schonbrunn in Vienna so impressed that he decided to make a replica of the Sissi Palace. Since then he travels around with what is the largest moveable scenery of the world is referred to more than 125 meter wide, 30 meter deep and 35 meter high, complete with ballroom, ice rinks, fountains.

Worldwide Rieu now has 27 million CDs and DVDs sold. Last year he was the only classical artist in the top ten of Worldwide Touring Acts state. He sold 700,000 tickets 71 shows worldwide, accounting for nearly 77 million dollars and eighth place.