André Rieu: 'We want to hug each other, and sing together and dance together'
Andre Rieu has just released Jolly Holiday, a live CD and DVD of last year’s Christmas concert in Maastricht. Picture:: Ian West/PA Wire
André Rieu sounds a bit fed up, and who could blame him? The Dutch musician, who speaks six languages, is particularly eloquent in conveying the frustration we all feel at the moment, and it is refreshing to hear him use a particularly apt swear word to encapsulate it.
“When people speak about the ‘new normal’ it makes me so angry. This ‘distance’ shit….we are not born to be at a distance from each other. We want to hug each other, to kiss each other and to be next to each other, and sing together and dance together and cry together. That is what we want in life, not this. It is terrible, all the stories you hear about all the elderly people dying alone in nursing homes. It is awful.”
Rieu’s famous optimism and positivity is being sorely tested by Covid at the moment. The concept of social distancing, a phrase we hadn’t even heard of this time last year, is anathema to a man whose raison d’être is live performance.
The 71-year-old superstar violinist, conductor and ‘King of the Waltz’ is adored by millions of fans around the world for the joy and sparkle he brings to their lives with his gloriously kitsch live performances, where audience participation is de rigeur. Such joy and sparkle is in short supply now. Rieu is well aware of how fortunate he is but for someone who is known for his interaction with fans, who dance, sing and clap along at his concerts, to have that taken away, virtually overnight, is a shock to the system.
“I’ll tell you now, Marjorie, I sit with my Marjorie (this writer shares a name with Rieu’s wife of 46 years) every morning at breakfast. Our first thoughts and words are, ‘how is it going in the world, how are we making progress, when is the vaccine coming and how long can we pay the salaries’.… I am at home and I am in a good house,” he says in something of an understatement (he bought the 17th century castle in Maastricht where he had taken piano lessons as a child).
“We do our exercise and we try to live healthily and stay positive but it is terrible, awful, it is a catastrophe. Normally I am travelling the world, giving a hundred concerts a year all over the world and we are not able to do what we like, and that is making music on stage. Last night I couldn’t sleep and I was looking at YouTube and I saw one of my concerts and I had tears in my eyes because I saw the joy of the people standing and singing together, it was so beautiful to see and so sad that is not possible to do it now.”
Like a lot of people, Rieu is drawing on memories of good times past to get through the current Covid-imposed stasis, and has just released Jolly Holiday, a live CD and DVD of last year’s Christmas concert in his home city of Maastricht. The violinist’s summer concerts there are legendary and last year, it was decided to have one at Christmas for the first time.
“It was my dream to do Christmas concerts in my home town, we had never done that. I wanted to start a new tradition. Then came Covid-19 but the memories of this concert are really fantastic. It was unbelievable. I brought everything that was in my dreams to the audience. I had two ice rinks, ice dancers, 300 dancers on the floor, a gospel choir, it was unbelievable. All the bells and whistles.”
While this populist approach goes down a treat with fans, it attracts much snarkiness from others who see his performances as schmaltzy, something which he takes as a compliment.
“My concerts are about joy and love,” he says. “I love Johann Strauss but I am also fascinated by Andrew Lloyd Webber or Bruce Springsteen. We should stop limiting ourselves with categories and boundaries — not just in terms of music but in our lives in general.” He may not be on stage but Rieu still takes out his precious 1667 Stradivarius violin every day.
“Last night I was practising for two hours. I play to keep in shape and to help the sound in my ear. It is like an acrobat when he doesn’t practise, he falls down.”
The pandemic restrictions and intermittent lockdowns are also particularly difficult for Rieu’s 55-piece Johann Strauss orchestra — the largest private orchestra in the world.
However, Rieu, whose live concerts regularly sell out in cinemas, is still able to maintain a connection with his legion of fans through his hugely popular filmed performances.
“In fact, Marjorie and me are very busy, as we are the whole day in the studio because all the countries where we play all over the world, they have asked me if I have something positive to show to their audience whether it is in Colombia, the Fiji Islands or wherever. So we are making a lot of compilations for them and they can put that on TV there. That is fantastic and it gives me a warm feeling.”
His fans who have tickets to postponed performances have also told him they will wait as long as it takes to see him.
“We sold 750,000 tickets in the last year, all over the world, and all these people are telling me, ‘Andre, I have my ticket in my pocket, I will wait for you five years’. That gives me a really warm feeling. It shows the loyalty of my audience. And that is what I feel when I am on stage.”
Rieu is scheduled to play at 3Arena in Dublin next April, one of his upcoming tour commitments that he thinks he may be able to realistically meet.
“We have a tour in January in Germany and I must be realistic, I think that will not happen, it is too early. In February, we have Spain and Portugal, we have already postponed that, and in March we have our tour in America, I don’t know, perhaps that is too early also. But then it’s April, it starts with Dublin, so all my hope is with Dublin.”
When Rieu eventually does return to live performance, whether that is in Dublin or elsewhere, it will be unlike any other concert, I suggest. The emotion is audible in his voice, as he says he doesn’t know if he will be able to hold back the tears. "There will be a lot of tissues,” he says.
As we finish up and I wish him a speedy and safe return to live performance, the optimistic André is back.
“It will happen, I know. We are positive. I am 100% sure everything will be okay again.” And when he says it, I believe him.
- His age when he started playing the violin.
- the number of concerts he usually performs a year.
- Rieu has exceeded this number in sales of CDs and DVDs around the world.
- The number of platinum awards he has received.
- The number of YouTube views of Rieu and his orchestra’ performing The Second Waltz live in Maastricht last year.
- The number of people Rieu played to at Melbourne’s Telstra Dome.
- The debt he accrued after constructing two full-size replicas of Schönbrunn Palace, in Vienna for his World Stadium Tour in 2008.
- The number of hours Sky broadcast Rieu content daily when it renamed its Sky Arts 2 channel Sky Arts Rieu for two weeks in 2013.
