By: Ekrem Dupanović
Somehow it always happens that SVEM (Sarajevo Nights of Music) is held the day after my birthday. It’s as if my friend, Ninoslav Verber, Director of SVEM, lets me celebrate my birthday on May 9th and then treats me with a couple of great concerts.
This year, the twenty-fifth jubilee SVEM on May 10 was opened by Ivo Pogorelić with a magnificent concert with Sarajevo Philharmonic. For the first time I sat in a loge, watching Pogorelić from the back. Throughout the entire concert my eyes were fixated on his hands. As hypnotized, I watched his hands traverse the keys. An incredible experience! Listening to music and watching those hands move on the piano is something truly unique.
The second night, on Saturday – a concert by Zoran Todorović, a famous tenor from Monaco. He called this concert “The Journey”, because his arias took us through the countries in which some of the most popular arias and movie melodies were created. Also, for the first time I saw the bandoneon – a small accordion with a curious sound, played virtuously by Aleksandar Nikolić. Also on the stage were Zoran Anić on the guitar and Slobodan Gerić on the contrabass. A small, but select company who delighted the Sarajevo audience.
I’m not writing the diary just to give my impressions of the concerts. I’m neither qualified to write about music nor is my vocabulary rich enough to express all the emotions. Listening to the music, I was thinking about sponsorships in culture and art, and the fact that SVEM, despite the great program and the great public interest, didn’t have any sponsors. This was mentioned by the theater director Dino Mustafić, who had the honor to open the 25th SVEM. I also talked about this several times with Verber, who said they had sent requests and offers, but that there was no interest.
Sarajevo Nights of Music are a great festival of music. In order to be more financially successful, which automatically reflects on the quality of the program, several conditions need to be met. We in Sarajevo don’t have good music critics whose authority would give art music greater media space. They could popularize this kind of music, educate a permanent audience that would ensure a more secure future for the Sarajevo Philharmonic and the Sarajevo Opera. The second thing that has to be taken into account is SVEM’s promotion. Apart from a few B2 format posters and several press statements, nothing else has been done. Even so, Pogorelić, Todorović and other artists who performed at the SVEM had to attract interest of the sponsors.
Being good at what you do is not enough. A good example of this is the experiment that was done by the Washington Post in January 2007, when they arranged with one of the greatest violinists in the world, Joshua Bell, to play the greatest classical works by Bach and Schubert, on a Stradivarius’s worth $ 3.5 million, at one of the metro stations of Washington, dressed casually and with a baseball cap on his head.
Thousands of people passed by him that morning, and hardly any of them noticed the magnificent performance of a virtuoso on the violin. He had a hat in front of him, in which passers-by dropped money. One of the world’s greatest violinists, for a 45-minute concert, earned just $ 32.17 – $ 20 of which came from a passer-by who recognized him. Just a few days before that experiment, Bell had a concert at Boston’s Symphony Hall, where the cheapest ticket was $ 100. This experiment best describes how it is possible that even the greatest talent can remain totally unnoticed in the cacophony of everyday life if people aren’t aware of who is in front of them.
It’s the same with sponsors. For them to invest in sponsorships, they must come to concerts. Until they enjoy the music themselves, they will not invest. This year I personally shared the tickets to several potential sponsors. We’ll see if they’ll appear at SVEM next year.
May 12, 2019
