‘We like to dress up and be nice to see. It’s not Broadway. For us it’s how we are’
VIOLIN virtuoso André Rieu is the world renowned king of the waltz. But could the Dutch maestro also be the king of cakes? “Since the corona ****, my kitchen is my home,” he tells me. “I’m a normal guy, I am cooking; I am baking. You name it, I make it. Yesterday, a cake! I’ll send you some pictures...”
And he did. This tricolour creation – sent via Whatsapp, as even multi-millionaires need to economise these days – is worthy of Paul Hollywood’s firmest handshake.
Rieu’s home is actually a castle – we’ll get to that – but that doesn’t make lockdown any less frustrating. Normally he and his Johann Strauss orchestra perform 100 three-hour concerts a year to 700,000 people.
“We have been travelling the world for 40 years,” André, 70, tells me. “And now from one day to another we are sitting here doing nothing. It’s very hard. We miss making music and we miss seeing each other. We are friends and we don’t see our friends now for four months. It must end soon or we will go crazy.”
It’s costing him a fortune. “I’m still paying the orchestra,” he confides. “It’s very expensive. There are 136 people on my payroll, including technical staff and office staff.”
Dutch government subsidies cover a hefty chunk of the wage bill but it’s still a massive drain, with no end in sight.
Mercifully, the atmosphere, spectacle and sheer communal joy of André’s live performances are coming soon to a cinema near you. The film Magical Maastricht: Together In Music, features the very best of the open-air concerts he plays with his orchestra every summer in his hometown.
Last year 150,000 fans turned up to Maastricht’s Vrijthof Square – “100 nationalities from all over the world,” he beams. “It’s a beautiful thing and very special. I look at the audience and I see the whole population – a cleaning lady next to a professor, little children next to an old lady. Only music that touches the heart can reach so many. That’s what we play.”
Naturally, classical music snobs hate everything about André, from his glorious mix of Strauss, opera songs and musical standards, to his relaxed and engaging stage persona.
“In classical music everything is serious. I like to
of Brussels two years after he married Marjorie Kochmann in 1975.
Then a language student, she encouraged him to follow his dream and create his own orchestra, which he did in 1978 “with just 12 musicians,” he says. “We played for weddings, restaurants, anywhere we could get a booking. And we were always ignored. Marjorie was studying languages and she was fed up too. So we thought that we might open a pizza restaurant.
“We both had very severe parents and we didn’t have our puberty. So for three weeks we decided to have our puberty – put my violin in a cupboard with her books and throw away the key
“We had menu cards printed up: the most expensive item was going to be the Pizza Paganini. If you ordered that, I would come out of the kitchen and play at the table – but then I realised that I would have to start practising again.”
Now the couple have two grown-up sons and Marjorie is his s production manager.
FAME CAME decades later. At 50, Andre decided to buy a minute of live TV coverage during the break when Ajax played Bayern Munich to perform Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2.
“Ajax did me a huge favour and scored just before half-time,” he says. “The next week I sold 200,000 CDS.” Since then he has shifted more than 40 million; his tours outsell everyone from Metallica to Beyoncé.
The fruits of Rieu’s success include the 17th-century Castle De Torentjes overlooking the river Meuse that is now his home. It once belonged to Charles de Batz-castelmore d’artagnan who inspired Dumas’s fictional musketeer (and died at the 1673 siege of
Maastricht after taking a musket ball in the throat.)
“The castle, she’s a very old lady,” he says. “Built with very soft sandstone, so I’m constantly renewing every building but I like that. It’s nice. It costs a lot of money but it’s romantic.”
André had piano lessons there when he was six and it was “dark and damp and practically falling down”. The crumbliest parts date from the 15th century. His other prized possession is a 17th-century Stradivarius worth just shy of £10million £10million. Asked if he slept with it, he famous famously replied: “No, I sleep with my wife but the violin is in between.” H He admits to being “very i impatient, and quick. and My my wife temper always is tells high me to slow down.”
His ambition is to play a concert on the moon. “Richard Branson promised me he’d build a hotel on the moon, so I want to be the first to play there. I don’t see any hotel on the moon yet but the offer still stands. I’ll be 140 by then!”
He’s serious. “A professor in London says the first human to reach 140 is already alive. I’ve got 70 years to go.
“I would like to live 1,000 years, to see what we’ll do. I’m healthy. I do body-building and sport three times a week with a trainer. I eat healthily; I don’t smoke, I don’t drink and I’m positive.
“When the corona **** is finished I will jump in the street and hug all the people I see. And when I’ve hugged everybody for a day I’ll grab my violin and play music for the people.
“I don’t think corona will change the world. We will go back to kissing and enjoying music again!”
André Rieu’s Magical Maastricht: Together In Music will screen in 500 UK cinemas, September 18 to October 15