The orchestra for every occasion

BELGRADE - The Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra has lived through a lot in the past 20 years.

Yugoslavia has been reinvented in different, ever-shrinking configurations, finally dissolving altogether with the divorce of Serbia and Montenegro.

Belgrade has gone from being the capital of the West's favourite communist state to a warmongering pariah and target of 78 days of Nato bombing raids, to being the latest applicant to join the European Union.

Through it all the band played on.

So it is ironic, now Serbia may rejoin the West, that the city's finest flowering of Western culture should be struggling to survive. But that was the subtext of an advertisement in the city's papers.

"The national Philharmonic orchestra, with 85 years of tradition and a rich repertoire, can now play at your house for a reasonable fee," the advertisement ran.

The 96 "perfectly trained musicians" offered to play "at weddings, funerals, baptisms, birthdays, divorces and saints' days ... We have suitable attire for all occasions".

Could the mighty Belgrade Phil be serious? Blasting away at barmitzvahs, in full penguin get-up?

"This was our way of drawing the attention of a broader public to the problems of the Philharmonic, to somehow present our financial problems in an absurd, Monty Python way," the orchestra's director, Ivan Tasovac, 42, explained.

Because today the orchestra is in serious trouble. Having clambered back from near-extinction since the end of the Yugoslav wars, the orchestra has found itself sliding down another slippery slope because of the global recession.

Serbia has slashed its culture budget from €78 million ($169 million) to €56 million, of which about 1.5 per cent goes to the orchestra. Like other important national institutions including the National Theatre and the National Museum, it is staring into the abyss.

Yet while high culture languishes, the Government pours millions of euros into events such as a pop festival called EXIT and a popular folk trumpet festival, events that attract hundreds of thousands of young people from all over former Yugoslavia and beyond.

Millions are spent subsidising concerts by huge stars such as Santana (in July) and Madonna (in August), which are sure to be attended by tens of thousands of fans.

Critics complain that financing events of this sort, although they boost tourism, is a misuse of the state's culture budget. Meanwhile the members of the Belgrade Philharmonic are paid a pittance by international standards.

The top musicians earn some €700 per month, but most earn only €350. "It's no wonder," said Tasovac, "that, in order to survive, members of the orchestra moonlight at jam sessions, or with popular folk music singers."

- INDEPENDENT