Love him or hate him, few people have done more to bring classical music to global audiences than André Rieu.
The Dutch violinist/conductor regularly presents massive orchestral concerts that are full-fledged spectacles.
André Rieu, 2023
He tours massive venues around the world playing light music, including waltzes, opera classics, soundtrack themes, folksongs, and more.
His backup band is the Johann Strauss Orchestra, an ensemble made up of men in suits and women wearing ballgowns.
Some classical musicians look down on him, given that none of the music he performs is particularly technically challenging, and his stage persona can come across as cheesy or saccharine.
Yet it’s impossible for his haters to deny his popularity. On YouTube, his performances can reach hundreds of millions of views.
Today, we’re looking at the 10 most-watched André Rieu videos on YouTube, and seeing which performances and composers have proven most popular.
10. La Paloma
80 million views
La Paloma (“The Dove”) is an old Spanish folk song.
At this concert, it was played after a balloon drop, so there are intermittent gunshot-like pops throughout as various balloons meet their demise.
This performance is from Rieu’s tour of Mexico. The crowd is clearly delighted to see him. At one point, a four-panel banner is unfurled, reading “André Mexico te ama” (“André, Mexico loves you”).
You’d be hard-pressed to find another conductor who could inspire audience-made signage.
9. Ave Maria
83 million views
Franz Schubert’s soulful Ave Maria has comforted and inspired listeners for generations.
Rieu’s performance features Australian soprano Mirusia Louwerse. She graduated from the Queensland Conservatorium in 2006, then got her star break in 2007 when her aunt contacted Rieu to recommend her for a job. Two days later, she came to audition for Rieu, and the rest is history.
8. Boléro
86 million views
In its original form, Maurice Ravel’s orchestral showpiece Boléro is a meticulously planned fifteen minute crescendo.
For this outdoor performance (which took place on the same program as the Macarena), Rieu created an arrangement that is half that length.
However, what this performance lacks in length gains in massive bursts of pyro flaring up from the stage during the piece’s closing moments.
7. Macarena
87 million views
Rieu loves to break out of the classical box (whether such breakage is musically well-advised or not…), and here he takes on the 1993 pop hit “Macarena.”
This arrangement culminates in a dancer whipping off her skirt to tap-dance (briefly) on the grand piano.
This performance took place in the streets of Rieu’s hometown of Maastricht in the Netherlands, and the audience there gets fully into the spirit of things, miming back the famous dance to Rieu’s chorus of women in ballgowns.
6. Waltz No. 2 from the Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1
88 million views
Trapped in the totalitarian hell that was Stalinist Russia, composer Dmitri Shostakovich had a talent for writing music laced with irony and sarcasm that could mean different things to different audiences, depending on the timing and venue.
This waltz from his Suite for Variety Orchestra is a prime example: despite its rocking rhythm and outwardly happy mood, something about it feels wary or unsettling, like Shostakovich has just dropped the listener into a forced celebration.
Here, though, Rieu gives as earnestly happy and uncomplicated a performance as can be imagined, and the audience, dancing the aisles, certainly doesn’t mind.
The first performance of the Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1 took place in 1988, long after Shostakovich’s death. Six years later, Rieu made a bestselling recording of this waltz.
5. O Mio Babbino Caro
99 million views
This aria comes from Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi, and is a plea from a character to her father, threatening suicide unless she is allowed to marry the boy she loves.
To perform it, Rieu hired nine-year-old soprano Amira Willighagen, who in 2013 was fresh off winning Holland’s Got Talent. (She had sung the piece for her audition on the show, which went viral.)
4. Voilà
104 million views
Here’s another performance by another Dutch singer, this time, fifteen-year-old Emma Kok, the winner of The Voice Kids.
In his introduction to this performance, Rieu discusses Kok’s gastroparesis diagnosis and her reliance on a feeding tube to eat.
Then they and the orchestra perform the French-language pop song “Voilà”, written by songwriter Barbara Pravi.
Kok is now on tour with Rieu.
3. Ballade pour Adeline
105 million views
“Ballade pour Adeline” is another song from the world of popular music.
It’s a 1977 instrumental work by composer and producer Paul de Senneville, written in celebration of the birth of his daughter Adeline.
The song gives the orchestra’s pianist a chance to shine, dressed in the ensemble’s characteristic ballgown uniform.
2. The Beautiful Blue Danube
106 million views
Rieu is known as the modern Waltz King, and his orchestra is named after Johann Strauss.
Yet it’s noteworthy that Strauss’s “Beautiful Blue Danube” and the Shostakovich waltz are the only two classical waltzes in André Rieu’s ten most popular performances.
This performance of the “Blue Danube” took place just outside of the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna in 2006 and features costumed dancers waltzing in an unimaginably massive set. Rieu himself claimed it cost $63 million to build.
He told the Telegraph, “My castle was the best set ever built for an artist. Of course, recreating a castle was completely stupid, so it was my worst financial decision, but also my best, because it bought the best publicity.”
1. The Lonely Shepherd
214 million views
Here’s the most popular André Rieu video of all time: “The Lonely Shepherd”, a 1977 instrumental piece by composer James Last. In the original recording, it was performed by pan flute virtuoso Gheorghe Zamfir, and he also appears in this performance.
It has amassed an astonishing 214 million views over the past eight years.
Conclusion
André Rieu and the Johann Strauss Orchestra
Haters can hate (and they will). They can say that André Rieu is cheesy, or that he cheapens the repertoire by cutting it up and making a commercial spectacle of it.
On the other hand, for decades, he has been laughing all the way to the bank, and his performances have brought snippets of classical music to hundreds of millions of people all around the globe.
Whether you like it or not, there is currently no one else like André Rieu in the classical music world.
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