Word: rieu
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...place in April 2001 suggests it was not up to the task of maintaining Lascaux's equilibrium. By the end of that year, Geneste ordered the fans taken out altogether. "If we knew then what we learned later, we wouldn't have installed that machine," says Alain Rieu, the director of conservation for the region of Aquitaine, which ultimately signed off on--and paid for--the work. "But the old machinery was in a bad state of repair, and we all decided unanimously that we couldn't take the risk of doing nothing. It seemed like the least bad solution...
...place in April 2001 suggests it was unequal to the task of maintaining Lascaux's equilibrium. By the end of that year, Geneste ordered the fans taken out altogether. "If we knew then what we learned later, we wouldn't have installed that machine," says Alain Rieu, the director of conservation for the region of Aquitaine, which ultimately signed off on - and paid for - the work. "But the old machinery was in a bad state of repair, and we all decided unanimously that we couldn't take the risk of doing nothing. It seemed like the least bad solution...
...graduate of the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, Rieu spent the early part of his career playing anonymously in symphony orchestras. "I was sitting there," he recalls, "playing for one conductor after another who did everything wrong, and I knew I could do it better. So one day 10 years ago, I told my wife, 'Either I die now, or I do something else.' I quit my job and started my own orchestra, and had success immediately--the halls were filled...
...Rieu is hardly the first musician to fill concert halls by playing Viennese waltzes and polkas. Johann Strauss II composed On the Beautiful Blue Danube and dozens of other classic waltzes for his own touring orchestra, which he led while simultaneously playing the violin (a practice emulated by Rieu); countless other purveyors of light classical music have flourished since. What sets Rieu apart is timing. Today's conductors and soloists, however gifted, mostly lack the charisma of the previous generations of classical-music giants such as Leonard Bernstein and Vladimir Horowitz, and they have largely failed to capture the imagination...
Though far from a world-class soloist, Rieu is a perfectly respectable violinist and conductor, and he has a knack for picking danceworthy tempos. His slickly polished albums may not be especially demanding, but they aren't gimmicky either; he doesn't play reggae versions of Tales from the Vienna Woods or pose in a G-string for publicity shots. All he does is look handsome and make music--a concept as old-fashioned as the music he makes. Therein, in fact, may lie the real secret of his success: the perpetually hummable tunes of the 19th century waltz king...