Forever Vienna
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Artist: Andre Rieu List Price: £16.99 Our Price: £4.83 You Save: £12.16 (72%) Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours  |
|
 | Product Details: Release Date: 28 December 2009 Record Label: Decca Rating:   Sales Rank: 204 | | Look for similar items by category:
| | Customers who bought this item also bought: | | Customer Reviews: Disappointing (01 September 2010)I was trained in classical (serious) music and 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" and found it to be exactly the same! I guess this guy is just another crook in 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 (30 August 2010)just another must to play ,over and over again, I just love this music ,I play it most days and you will to . Forever Vienna,C.D.and D.V.D. (29 August 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 (26 August 2010)Mr Rieu is quite a nice fellow with a pleasant, if at times slightly insipid, sense of humour and 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 and over again and pedestrian standard of musicianship, Rieu included; they have in the mean time mended their ways though), started a small string band which led an only marginally successful existence and every once in a while toured with a pick-up band recreating the music of the Strauss family and like composers. Since his chance hit "The Second Waltz", a watered down version of a Shostakovitch composition, he has seen the light and has since that time carefully edited, truncated and simplified the lighter classics and "classified" all kinds of overly familiar music. He dressed-up the lady musicians as fairy princesses, made his male musicians smirk, and have them all gaily wave their instruments and 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 and DVD buyers and 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 and 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), and that all who say otherwise are snobs, elitist, intellectual, arrogant and grumpy old men, who sit in cheerless concert halls listening to penguins playing music that no one understands? It's that ill-informed, lazy, overawed and reveling-in-an-underdog-position what irks me about the hype around Mr Rieu (for which he himself can hardly be blamed) and 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 (27 July 2010)This was our first introduction to Andre Rieu and 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 and DVD will be played many times. |
