André Rieu turned the waltz into stadium entertainment, and critics still argue about it
A Dutch violinist with a 1667 Stradivarius, André Rieu founded a twelve-piece waltz band in 1987 and grew it into a touring spectacle that fills stadiums. In Australia he outsold every other music act between 2006 and 2011. Some critics call it commodified kitsch; he treats the word schmaltzy as praise.
Rieu was born on 1 October 1949 in Maastricht, the third of six children. His surname has French Huguenot roots, although both parents were Catholic. His father conducted the Maastricht Symphony Orchestra, and André picked up the violin at five. He found his parents strict and, as an adult, drifted away from his father's musical approach. Training took him to the Conservatoire Royal in Liège, the Conservatorium Maastricht between 1968 and 1973, and then the Music Academy in Brussels from 1974 to 1977, where he studied with André Gertler and graduated with a Premier Prix.
His Johann Strauss Orchestra gave its first concert on 1 January 1988 with a dozen players; by 2020 he was performing with 50 to 60 musicians. Tours have covered Europe, the Americas, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. In 2008 he travelled with a full-size copy of Empress Sisi's castle, then the largest touring stage ever built. For two weeks in 2013 a Sky channel in Britain was rebranded Sky Arts Rieu and showed nothing but his concerts and films around the clock.
Australia is among his strongest markets. He had collected 100 platinum awards there by December 2008, and by May 2011 wholesale shipments of his discs had passed $50 million. A film of one of his Maastricht shows became Britain's highest-grossing concert film, according to a 2015 Guardian review.
Reviews split sharply. Tom Service of The Guardian accused him of turning masterpieces into sugary fodder, while Alfred Hickling in the same paper likened his business instincts to those of Johann Strauss II. Nina Siegal of the New York Times compared him with Liberace. Rieu says he aims for a total artwork of music, costume and decor. He lives in a small Maastricht castle with his wife, Marjorie, and speaks six languages.
Source: André Rieu
