André Rieu: ‘My parents were afraid of me’

The 76-year-old King of the Waltz on living to 140, his controversial arena tours and seeking the adoration he never received as a child

At 76, violinist André Rieu is showing no signs of slowing down and is planning a a run of arenas in Britain next year Credit: Marcel van Hoorn/Rieu Productions BV

André Rieu would like to issue a correction. When this newspaper interviewed the Dutch violinist conductor, impresario and “King of the Waltz” seven years ago, he told us that he intended to live to 1,000.

“I would love to do it,” he said, citing the work of Prof Aubrey de Grey, the British biomedical gerontologist and author of Ending Ageing. “I think it’s possible. From the moment that he says, ‘OK, we are ready to trial,’ I’m there. I’m first.”

That was in 2019, when Rieu was 69. He is now 76 and, while he’s as vivacious as ever, he’s revising his lifespan. “I don’t want to live forever, but I think it’s possible now, without tricks and without pushing it, to be 140.

“It’s achievable, I think. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink anymore, I do my sport every day with a personal trainer. In fact, just yesterday my trainer was saying 100 is going to be the new 80, 120 the new 100. So… I’m trying.”

Rieu does not smoke or drink, and exercises daily, in pursuit of a longer life Credit: Janita Sassen

Firmly in middle age, then, Rieu looks well. “I’m in my castle,” he announces over Zoom, spinning to take in the ballroom from which he answers interviews. Rieu has owned the 16th-century De Torentjes Castle, in his hometown of Maastricht, for more than 30 years. It was once owned by Count d’Artagnan, made famous by Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers.

Today, its current swashbuckling owner sits on a gold chair, in a room filled with round tables covered in deep crimson tablecloths. On the wall behind him, gilt-framed oil paintings of Rieu stare out. “The castle is really my office,” he says, “I live next door.”

‘The castle is really my office’: Rieu in front of his home, De Torentjes Castle, in his hometown of Maastricht, the Netherlands Credit: Marcel van Hoorn

He is in his familiar tortoiseshell spectacles, and a sky-blue and sunflower-yellow checked suit. The hair remains a wonder: swept back by the gales of applause he is met with every night, and worn long, in a fashion popular for men in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Critics have said he’s trying a little too hard to evoke Beethoven; being worth something close to £40m, though, Rieu could probably buy Beethoven’s actual hair, if he wanted.

He is now one of the best-selling classical artists in the world, with 45 million albums sold and, at one point, performing to 600,000 people annually. Next year marks 40 years since Rieu and his wife of half a century, Marjorie, started their Johann Strauss Orchestra, building it from 12 musicians into a 60-piece, globally touring beast with 100 support staff and some of the most elaborate stage sets around.

Evoking Beethoven: Critics have said that with his hair and fashion, Rieu is trying a little too hard

Every concert – show, really – is a riot of colour, with mocked-up Habsburg palaces, ice rinks and balls. The men in the orchestra wear tails and the women wear low-cut satin gowns and puffed sleeves, like Disney princesses. Rieu approves every last sequin.

All the music is light, all the time signatures are adjusted to be waltz-able, even if they perhaps shouldn’t be, and Rieu, who slowly leads the players onstage from the back of the often stadium-sized arenas, conducts things with a perma-grin. He is met by raptures.

“The result is always the same: people go home with smiles on their faces, and they have an evening which makes them say, ‘Oh my God, I forgot the whole s— of the world.’

“And that is why we travel. I want to grab them by the heart and make them forget everything. I’m not travelling like a priest, of course, but the result is the same. It’s escapism.”

Not everybody sees it that way. Rieu’s detractors call him the “King of Schmaltz”. His music is too popular, they say. Too jaunty. Too garish. Not respectful enough.

“Very often people say about my pieces, ‘Ugh, it’s kitsch. But I don’t understand why people say that, because it’s simply with more feeling. Why is it too popular? What is too popular?”

He is no fan of what he sees as the “proudly elitist” types in the higher arts. “It’s that thing of, ‘You don’t understand this music, so you are not with us. We are here and you are there.’”

He is treated with “suspicion” by that crowd, he says. “They think I do it with tricks and all that, but there’s no tricks. It’s simply that I am like that. And I choose musicians around me who are happy to play with me. That’s it.”

In fairness, it is not only classical music snobs who are left cold. There exists a thread on the online forum Mumsnet that begins: “Just watching [Rieu’s] Christmas show on TV. He is like some kind of wizard. All those facial expressions, What is going on? The audience [is] obsessed!” The top reply reads: “I’m sure he is the leader of a cult which attracts pensioners.”

In fact, he says his audience is “growing and growing” thanks to Spotify and YouTube. And getting younger, too, though he concedes that young people often “come to the concert by accident” or get indoctrinated by a grandparent.

Rieu’s concerts often take place in stadium-sized arenas

Fans used to send him gifts, but now he has to tell them not to, because the internet is rife with fake Rieus: AI-generated videos saying he’s dead, or injured, or impoverished. And his acolytes are all too ready to open their purses.

“That’s troubling us a lot. I read that it comes from Vietnam. There are young, highly educated technicians who make all these [videos]. There was one lady, a fan of mine in Puerto Rico, who paid €35,000 to these guys, thinking she’d paid it to me because my castle needed a renovation.” He looks desolate. “Not good. But it’s a part of life nowadays.”

Rieu sees his orchestra as a family, and he’s the patriarch. His own father, André Sr, was a conductor who ran the Limburg Symphony Orchestra, in Maastricht. Rieu took up the violin aged five, and later spent 11 “miserable” years as his father’s principal second violin.

“He was more or less a dictator. He picked on the weak people. I didn’t like that. He was not very sympathetic. I thought, OK, I’m going to do things a different way.”

Rieu describes his father (pictured together) as a ‘more or less a dictator’ Credit: Mungo Glaysher

The third of six siblings, Rieu was extremely talented, but, as he previously told The Telegraph, his father never said he loved him and his mother told him she got a hernia carrying him and thus he would “never amount to anything”. It’s difficult to see why they wouldn’t simply be proud of him.

“Exactly, ask them. They are dead, but when I think about them now, I think they were afraid of me. They couldn’t cope with me being as I am. My mother always said, ‘Don’t look people in the eyes, André, that’s not polite.’ But that’s what I do. Yes, I think they were afraid of me. It’s the first time I’ve said that.”

Of course, Rieu went on to ensure he would never have a love deficit again. Every night, thousands of people adore him. He initially scoffs at this thought. “You think it’s a compensation for my youth? You think I’m looking for admiration every day?” Well, you’ve certainly built the supportive family you never had… There is a pause. “Yeah, that’s true. You could explain it like that.”

It hasn’t always been serene. In 2008 he infamously built three replicas of Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace, complete with ice rinks and carriages covered in actual gold, for a sold-out tour of Australia. However, the cost was prohibitive and Rieu was saddled with £30m of debt.

He and Pierre, his manager and younger son (now 45; his brother, Marc, is 48), sat in a bank all day, remonstrating. “A young guy from the bank said to the others, ‘Let him play, because that’s the only way we can get our money back.’ And he was right.”

He was indeed. Rieu’s tour the following year sold 1.1 million tickets, becoming the sixth-highest-grossing of the year, above Britney Spears, Tina Turner and Coldplay.

And now he is going back on the road. A residency in Maastricht, where he is beloved (“I am, actually. I make a lot of money for them”), precedes a run of arenas in Britain, then he circles around Europe until well into next summer.

For a tour of Australia in 2008, Rieu built a replica of Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace. Underwhelming ticket sales left him £30m in debt Credit: Lucas Dawson/Getty Images

Every stop has the same schedule. “We have a little soup, sound check, dinner together. I go to sleep, they go into town, then we have our concert. I don’t explore cities. I’m going to do that when I’m 120.”

Some locations are too dangerous. They were booked to play in Russia, then the war started. They were due to return to Bahrain, but then war broke out in the Middle East. They’ve played Israel but wouldn’t now. “It’s too dangerous. All 130 people must agree, and they trust in me.”

But he loves Britain. Some 50 years ago, it was seeing the Last Night of the Proms on television that first showed Rieu how lively classical music can be. “There is this joy, this looseness, normally [at concerts] the audience is very disciplined. I heard you can only go to the Last Night if you’ve seen 10 Proms?”

He means the “five-concert ballot” (one of several ways you can acquire tickets, in fact), and he approves. “Because then you get a good audience, not like the New Year’s concert in Vienna. That’s spoilt, because there are only Japanese sitting there for a lot of money. That’s not good.”

Rieu recently found out he’s going to be a grandfather for the sixth time, and is already planning his 80th birthday party, which sounds similar to his nightly concerts (“dancers from all over the world, I’ll play the waltz…”), but age cannot wither him.

In fact, he now books the hotel suite next to his own to use as a gym, having been inspired by actor and former wrestler Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, who famously takes his “Iron Paradise” weights room wherever he goes. “I thought, if the Rock can do that, I can too.”

Alas, there are some things he can’t outrun. “I play less,” he laments. “The muscles in your hands are completely different when you’re older. But that’s normal.” He smiles. It isn’t frustrating for him. “Now, when I hear my old recordings, I think, ‘Oh my s—, that was beautiful. That was me.’”