WHEN it comes to drawing full houses, he is one of America’s biggest pop stars. André Rieu is one of Holland’s most successful export products in America. They only book him in arenas that can hold at least 20,000 people. People come for the music, the costumes and the atmosphere. The vast majority of Americans know him, what he looks like, his long curls, the smile on his face. Rieu brings an orchestra of up to a hundred men and women, and a production team led by his son Pierre, and everyone gazes at the colorful dresses on stage, but they only remember one face and one name: that of André Rieu.
American concert reviewers struggled to get used to him, not sure which pigeonhole they thought he belonged in. Not at the level of what until recently was Jaap van Zweden’s New York Philharmonic. The Boston Pops maybe, classical music for the neighbors, where you don’t have to sit still. Certainly not rock, because nothing about him and his musicians reminds you of Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, or the Van Halen boys, David Crosby, let alone Elvis Presley or Bruce Springsteen, just to name a few guys with Dutch blood in their veins, from Spakenburg, Nijmegen, Schoonhoven, Bunschoten and Groningen respectively.
AMERICAN reporters, however, journalists who usually do their work without the airs of many a haughty reviewer, quickly picked it up. They reported on the traffic backups around those arenas, the mood among the crowds, and who were in those crowds: folks who go see André Rieu are Main Street USA. The New York Times sent such a reporter to Maastricht a few years ago, trying to make sense of Rieu’s appeal. She visited his Vrijthof concert, his 16th century home, the butterflies in his backyard, and she discovered something American.
André Rieu had gone bankrupt in 2008 after performing in front of 40,000 fans in Melbourne. That made all the newspapers. As a result, in 2009 all his concerts sold out, right down to the last seat, people who wanted to see and hear him one more time. He was back on his feet in no time. That’s what America loves, fighting back, the underdog. Hence the full arenas ever since: in ‘22 Atlanta, Orlando, Tampa, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Oakland, San Diego, Portland, last year Chicago, Detroit, Columbus, Washington, New York, and Boston. People came in droves, flocking.
NOT LONG ago, that same New York Times asked a handful of reviewers and reporters about their favorite violin concerto. They also asked André Rieu since they couldn’t reasonably avoid him anymore, not after his spectacular concert in Radio City Music Hall that tout New York was talking about. So: what is your favorite violin concerto? Rieu picked himself.
His solo part in Sinatra’s My way.
