André Rieu Happy Birthday! A Celebration of 25 years [Comple

[JustJohn or JJ]

I have this on my PC and listen to it often. The pleasure this man and his group brings to his audience is beyond compare.

I love it !!!!!


André Rieu Happy Birthday! A Celebration of 25 years [Complete]

[pieter]

Dear John,

This Southern-Dutch guy is a very good musician, entertainer, show biz man, entrepreneur in one. He entertains people in many countries. He is popular in The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Australia and the USA (your fondness of his music and show).

His music is not excactly my taste of music (Night of the Proms kind of music shows, the waltz genre), but he has talent and know how to entertain his audience with his waltz-playing Johann Strauss Orchestra. So he has got my respect and the admiration of his audiences and listeners around the globe.

Cheers,
Pieter

[pieter]

The name Rieu is of French Huguenot origin. He began studying violin at the age of five. His father, of the same name, was conductor of the Maastricht Symphony Orchestra. From a very young age he developed a fascination with orchestra. He studied violin at the Conservatoire Royal in Liège (Luik in Dutch/Flemish and Lüttich in German; and Lîdje in Wallon) and at the Conservatorium Maastricht, (1968–1973). His teachers included Jo Juda and Herman Krebbers. From 1974 to 1977, he attended the Music Academy in Brussels (Belgium), studying with André Gertler, finally receiving his degree "Premier Prix" from the Royal Conservatory of Brussels.

[pieter]

Johann Strauss Orchestra



The Orchestra began in 1987 with 12 members and the first concert was given on 1 January 1988. It now performs with between 80 and 150 musicians. At the time the Orchestra first toured Europe, a renewed interest in waltz music emerged in the continent. The revival began in the Netherlands and was ignited by their recording of the Second Waltz from Shostakovich's Suite for Variety Orchestra. As a result, Rieu became known as the "Waltz King".

Rieu and his orchestra have performed throughout Europe, North and South America, and Japan. Winning a number of awards including two World Music Awards, their recordings have gone gold and platinum in many countries, including 8-times Platinum in the Netherlands.



He records both DVD and CD repertoire at his own recording studios in Maastricht in a wide range of classical music as well as popular and folk music, plus music from well-known soundtracks and musical theatre. His lively orchestral presentations, in tandem with marketing, have attracted worldwide audiences to this subgenre of classical music.

In recent years André Rieu and the Johann Strauss Orchestra have taken classical and waltz music on worldwide concert tours, the size and revenue of which are otherwise only seen from pop and rock music acts. In 2008 Rieu’s extravagant tour featured a full size reproduction of Empress Sisi’s Castle, the biggest stage ever to go on tour at that time. During the first half of 2009, André Rieu was the world’s most successful male touring artist, according to Billboard magazine.

[pieter]

[karl]

J.J.

Thank you very so much for your thoughtfulness, very much appreciated..André Rieu is very famous for his music style. He is though, well famed by those that love his musical style, and hated by those that are old school classical music specialist.He has appeared on ZDF television and must say he was very enjoyable with his rendition of the classics.

I am not sure, but believe also to hear him on radio broadcast by ARD.He is Dutch so Pieter would know much more then my self of him.

Karl

[pieter]

Dec 1, 2014 6:39:21 GMT -7 karl said:

J.J.

Thank you very so much for your thoughtfulness, very much appreciated..André Rieu is very famous for his music style. He is though, well famed by those that love his musical style, and hated by those that are old school classical music specialist.He has appeared on ZDF television and must say he was very enjoyable with his rendition of the classics.

I am not sure, but believe also to hear him on radio broadcast by ARD.He is Dutch so Pieter would know much more then my self of him.

Karl

Karl,

I come from a familybackground of these 'old school classical music specialists'. Part of my family is involved in the 'traditional classic music world'. They aren't André Rieu fans for sure. Rieu popularized a part of the classic music genre. This means he adabted that classic music towards the taste of a schlager music and European peoples music loving audience.

I am one of these 'traditional classic music world' people, but in contrast to others I don't hate or dislike André Rieu. Rieu serves his audience and thus people who like his kind of music. I prefer Rachmaninov, Schumann, Brahms and Beethoven. I am not that of a Strauss man. The 'traditional classic music world' and André Rieu's Johann Strauss Orchestra are two different worlds and kinds of music. Strauss is played by both, but in a different manner. That is okay, both serve an audience.

Thanks for telling the truth Karl, because for that it is!

Cheers,
Pieter

[karl]

Pieter

Thank you for your very thoughtful reply, for with it was to smooth out my morning.. I must say that you are so fortunant to have such a nice cultured family life. It would so be, that our early life is so much the foundation to what we are in our adult hood.

I think though, that we do have very similar music interest as you have mentioned, for I also do enjoy those masters as you mentioned. My music taste changes with mood and moment. If in a sour despondant moment, a good dose of Wagners Ride of the Valkyries will bring life back or a bit of Der Ring or Tristan und Isolde. For to simply drift and float in the mind, then to turn on some Indian Classical Instrument, this will allow my thoughts to flow freely with solutions to the days confusion to bring to mind.

My taste also travels into Turkish Ottomann and Kurdish, this then allows the mind to think. If to return to the flat in a state of simply to escape, then it is latin groups of the Andes.

I do though, enjoy Mozart as played on the Harpsichord. For some reason, the sounds of the Harpsichord rings down into the depths of the heart that is difficult to describe..

Karl

[pieter]

Oh, yeah, Wagner can be very impressive!



But I also have my limits with Wagner, he can be very heavy and Teutonic. You must have patience, a great admiration (addiction) and the Wagner desease to be able to listen to a whole Wagner piece. In my environment there are two kind of people, people who love Wagner and people who hate Wagner.

The haters have arguments like: To heavy, to German. To bombastic, to Germanic, or I don't like Opera. I like Wagner in short pieces like when his music was used in the Movie Melancholia of the Danish movie director Lars von Trier. Mahler, by the way, I am fond of Mahler, can be as heavy as Wagner, he can be Wagnerian.



You have a fine ecclectic taste in music. I have to amid that I am more of the pop music and electronic music generation, and less of the classical, folk music, peoples music and thus André Rieu, Night of the Proms and other kind of music in that genre. I have to say that people in the Netherlands who like André Rieu are most often people of older generations than me. People in their fifties, sixties and seventies. People with a regional base. And people with a fondness for Operette, Wiener (Austrian) music and popular Opera. I think I am young and thus infected by the soul of the sixties, the British Beatmusic of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Roxy Music of the Seventies, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, The Doors,The Pretenders, disco (the dance music of my era), the noise of hard rock & Punk (Jimmy Hendrix, MC 5, Iggy Pop and the Sex Pistols), the electronic wave of music after that (New Wave, the New Romantics, electro, House, techno and the Indie rock of the nineties and early this century). I have a completely different tast than my parents, sisters, neighbors, colleages and even a lot of my generation people. There are people of my generation who do like André Rieu, who are fond of his music and go to his concerts. And again, that is good for them, like it is good for John, who enjoy's his music.

In the romantic, emotional or old fashionate sense I go as far as this:









and German too, but English in it's lyrics



And two heroines of mine of the eighties, a German and British pop star join forces

[pieter]

Both with their own eighties hits (In Europe)

[pieter]

This portrays my mindset as a teenager during the eighties. I was not the only crazy person in the world.




And these Brits made my life easier back then with their music.

[pieter]

Dear John,

Before I take over this thread. What other Western-European music do you like next to André Rieu? There are not that many Dutch or German artists (in the sense of musicians) that are famous and liked in the USA.

Few hit bands:













A Dutch singer with an English sounding name




Dutch Frisian band which sings in (Dutch) Frisian


Another Frisian band with a Frisian song


This is a band from the city and the region and costal lands I spend my first 20 years, Vlissingen in Zeeland. They sing about the sea, in this case dancing at the sea.

(For Karl, maybe the feeling is the same as Cuxhaven. Their songs have the costal, fishermen, sailor and old holiday atmospheres)

The Zeeland Coast


This band BLØF is today one of the most famous and popular bands in the Dutch speaking world (countries)





This is a (Protest) song from the eighties about a racist murder. The singer sings: "Don't think white (Caucacian), don't think Black (African), don't think black white, but more like the color of your heart"

Zwart Wit is a song about the racial murder of Kerwin Duinmeijer in Amsterdam. ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerwin_Duinmeijer )

It reminds a little bit about the German song Kristallnacht of the German Rock band BAP


The German band The Scorpions created the song Wind Of Change, inspired by the fall of communism in Central- and Eastern-Europe



The lyrics celebrate Glasnost in the USSR, the end of the Cold War, and talks about hope when tense conditions arose due to the fall of Communist-run governments among Eastern Bloc nations beginning in 1989.

The Scorpions were inspired to write the song on a visit to Moscow in 1989, and the opening lines refer to the city's landmarks:

I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change
The Moskva is the name of the river that runs through Moscow (both the city and the river are named identically in Russian), and Gorky Park is an amusement park in Moscow named after Maxim Gorky, a famous communist writer.

The song also contains a reference to the balalaika, which is a Russian string instrument somewhat like a guitar. The balalaika is mentioned in the following verse:

For peace of mind
Let your balalaika sing
What my guitar wants to say

The Dutch band "The Little Orchestra" made a song about the Berlin Wall


East Berlin, Unter den Linden
People walking by flags and banners
Where Lenin and Marx still stand on a pedestal
And everyone works, hammers and sickles
As the guards are changing in parade step
Forty years of socialism, and much has been achieved

But what does utopia mean with walls surrounding it
If you’re afraid and have to say things cautiously
Oh, what is utopia, tell me: what is it worth?
When someone different is declared mad

And only the birds fly from East to West Berlin
Don’t be whistled back, nor shot down
Over the wall, over the Iron Curtain
Because sometimes they like to be in the West, and sometimes in the East

West Berlin, the Kurfürstendamm
People walking by porn- and peepshows
Where Mercedes and Cola still stand on a pedestal
And the neon ads, they’re glittering and luring
Come dance, come eat, come drink, come gamble!
Forty years of freedom, and much has been achieved

But what does freedom mean, without a home, without a job?
So many Turks in Kreuzberg who can hardly survive
Okay, you can demonstrate, but with your back against the wall
And only if you have money, can you be free

The birds fly from West to East Berlin
Don’t get whistled back, neither shot down
Over the wall, over the Iron Curtain
Because sometimes they like to be in the East, and sometimes in the West

Because there is bread lying sometimes near the Gedächtniskirche
And sometimes at the Alexanderplatz

Karl,

What is your favorite European music. You have an experiance with a youth and adult life in Denmark and Germany. I thought you mentioned 'The Rolling Stones' in Hamburg somewhere. I know you like David Bowie too. Where there German or Danish bands you liked? Did the Germans like French music (chancon) like the Dutch and Belgians? Italian, Spanish, Portugese (Fado), Austrian, Swiss music or Russian music. And Jaga, what music did you listen as young teenager and adult in Poland? And other Forummembers I forget to mention here, Nicetoe, Gardemona, Jeanne, and others.

Before this becomes another Dutch, *Pieters pop music ego trip.

Cheers,
Pieter

P.S.- This was a general Dutch popular pop music list, not everything is my personal favorite. I don't give that much about Twarres, Stevie Ann, the Nits, BLØF, the George Baker Selection or de Kast. But they represent the Dutch popular taste, and maybe also Flemish taste. Flemish people a Flemish author told me were fond of Dutch television and music during the eighties and nineties, because it was different, but they could understand the language. Dutch people also looked Flemish tv, listened to Flemish tv and loved some excellent Flemish authors (writers and poets) and Flemish movies and comedies. I am curious about Polish pop music or just music from Jaga's youth. Did you also listened to music of pop groups or music bands from neighboring countries, like Czechoslovakia, the SovjetUnion, the DDR, West-Germany, or Great-Britain and America -via Radio Luxemburg or Radio Free Europe?-

[pieter]

For John!

[Jaga]

John, Pieter, interesting videos. The first one quite funny. I agree with Pieter that this is not exactly my type of music, still nice to see all these performances.

[pieter]

Polish pop music