by So two years later you look him up yourself, assuming he's some maestro, because you're going to buy those goddamn tickets for him, next time he's around (I was too poor at the time to buy them), because no one else has, and you're going to be the number one son and upstage your siblings.
Anyway while googling you come across this devastating critique -
Here’s the thing. Sky Arts Rieu has, for this writer, taken on the quality of a scab that needs to be repeatedly picked. The Rieu experience is so hypnotically grotesque that life without it seems pale and underpowered. André and I are trapped in a co-dependent abusive relationship.
He tortures me with his ruthless desecrations of Mozart. I scream vile abuse at his unrelentingly smug face. Only one of us is making millions from the exchange.
(Other analogies rejected by the author included: drinking nail-polish remover, bursting swollen pimples and staring at the photographs of nasty tobacco-related diseases on contemporary British cigarette packets.)
Harsh!Sky Arts Rieu confirmed that André was attempting to summon up a Ruritanian NeverWas by sending a fawning journalist to his (no really) medieval castle on the outskirts of Maastricht.
Standing proudly beneath an appalling painting of himself – apparently perpetrated by the artists who once worked for Woolworth’s – Rieu calmly fielded criticisms that he was anything less than a maestro for the ages. You know how these things go. The classical music establishment is composed of snobs. How can you argue with a billion in record sales? And so on.
“Critics and musicians who attack me are jealous of my success and the fact that I make people happy,” he has said. It should be noted this is the sort of argument teenage Justin Bieber fans use when anybody dares to question that warbling chipmunk’s talent or pulchritude. “Your just jelous, lol!”
Jesus!Surely, this stuff is as demonstrably, unambiguously dreadful as the novels of Dan Brown, the films of Michael Bay or the comedy of Jim Davidson.
Identifying it as ordure is akin to classifying sodium hydroxide as an alkali. It just is.
And yet. This is not science. If hugely intelligent alien lizards descended to earth they may well prefer Daniel Barenboim to André Rieu, but, most likely, only because Dan tasted better when they locked their hungry jaws around his nourishing head.
In a few millennia all this culture will be meaningless dust. Until then, the bouncing masses at a Rieu concert have as much right to savour his saccharine melodies as I do to make theatrical gagging noises.
Oh, God! What am I about to unleash? I don't know if I should buy those tickets now. Not that any of this sounds out of sync with the schmaltz my dad listens to. I just don't want to be responsible for declassing my father further.Where's Orpheus?
