Customer Reviews
Disappointing - By: HR Zentgraf, 01 Sep 2010 
I was trainedin classical (serious) music & love every bit of it. When I saw this 'new' cd/dvd combination, I decided to buy it,in spite of having many other dvds of him. Great was my disappointment when I compared this dvd with "Royal Albert Hall" & found it to be exactly the same! I guess this guy is just another crookin disguise, trying to palm off "Vienna" with "London"... The cd is alright, but again includes all the music on most of his other recordings.
love this CD and DVDs GREAT to play - By: Jean Shergold, 30 Aug 2010 
just another must to play ,over & over again, I just love this music ,I play it most days & you will to .
Forever Vienna,C.D.and D.V.D. - By: Arturo, 29 Aug 2010 I cannot recommend this CD/DVD to highly, the value for money is beyond belief. The recordings are superb.
Those classic fans who do not have same do not know what they are missing.
a dissenting voice - By: JJA Kiefte, 26 Aug 2010 Mr Rieu is quite a nice fellow with a pleasant, if at times slightly insipid, sense of humour & a keen business acumen. He got bored as the leader of a provincial Dutch symphony orchestra (no great wonder, what with their programming of the perennial favourites over & over again & pedestrian standard of musicianship, Rieu included; they havein the mean time mended their ways though), started a small string band which led an only marginally successful existence & every oncein a while toured with a pick-up band recreating the music of the Strauss family & like composers. Since his chance hit "The Second Waltz", a watered down version of a Shostakovitch composition, he has seen the light & has since that time carefully edited, truncated & simplified the lighter classics & "classified" all kinds of overly familiar music. He dressed-up the lady musicians as fairy princesses, made his male musicians smirk, & have them all gaily wave their instruments & display publicly what a good time they all seem to be having (all carefully rehearsed, as are Rieu's carefully edited jokes; very little happens spontaneously). This eclectic mixture seems to hold an enormous appeal for millions of CD & DVD buyers & concert goers. No problem there. I do however have a problem with the fact that many "fans" seem to think that what Rieu presents is classical music, the real stuff. Actually, no, it's not. They also seem to think that Rieu is the world's greatest violinist; well, he plays a Stradivarius, so he should be, shouldn't he?. Well, no, he's not. Why do these "fans", without knowing Mozart from Wagner & a symphony from a concerto, so vociferously state that Rieu is the greatest, without ever having taken the trouble to listen to classical music (other than perhaps a Strauss waltz or a Puccini aria by Paul Potts or that Scottish hag whose name escapes me right now), & that all who say otherwise are snobs, elitist, intellectual, arrogant & grumpy old men, who sitin cheerless concert halls listening to penguins playing music that no one understands? It's that ill-informed, lazy, overawed & reveling-in-an-underdog-position what irks me about the hype around Mr Rieu (for which he himself can hardly be blamed) & is reason for me to counterbalance the silly raving reviews ("me mum likes it, so it must be good") with one star.
Enjoyment of good music - By: Mrs. J. D. Richardson, 27 Jul 2010 This was our first introduction to Andre Rieu & we were not disappointed. Good selection of music, thoroughly enjoyable listening. An added bonus was the DVD that accompanied this CD. Wow! This was pure entertainment at its best. A real showman, no stuffy orchestra this set up. The longer concert proceded the better it became. Both CD & DVD will be played many times.
