Norman Scribner has been one of Washington’s foremost music makers since graduating with honors in 1961 from Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. While pursuing positions at Washington National Cathedral, as keyboardist for the National Symphony Orchestra and teaching at local universities, he founded the Choral Arts Society of Washington in 1965. Five years later, the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1971 cemented his place in musical history. The commissioned work he conducted, Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass,” earned Scribner and the composer a co-nomination for a Grammy Award. In 1996, one of the CAS’s 16 recordings, John Corigliano’s “Of Rage and Remembrance” with the Oratorio Society and Leonard Slatkin conducting the NSO, received a Grammy Award for Best Classical Recording.
After 45 years of fervent praise and local honors for his imaginative programming, Scribner is retiring come August. His programming for this season reflects upon the past and looks forward to the future of music in the millennium.
| Onstage |
| Choral Arts Society |
| Where: Kennedy Center Concert Hall |
| When: 4 p.m. Sunday |
| Info: $15 to $65 at 202-785-9727 or choralarts.org. |
“The Choral Arts Society has always championed the music of our time as a living art,” he said. “I believe the 20th century is one of the most fertile periods for music. We must sort through the entire output to decide what is best, but the same thing happened in earlier centuries. For every great masterpiece that survives, 25 other works were dropped by the wayside.
“We’ve sung with Bernstein so many times that I’ve selected his ‘Chichester Psalms’ for our first program. Next, we’ll sing ‘Lux Aeterna’ by Morten Lauridsen, one of our finest contemporary composers. It looks both backward and forward in the way he has harmonized the plain song for the modern age.
“Then we will perform two Russian works, Stravinsky’s seminal ‘Symphony of Psalms’ and Prokofiev’s score from ‘Alexander Nevsky.’ That brings back tremendous memories of 1993 when we performed it in Red Square and Leningrad with the NSO led by Mstislav Rostropovich on his first trip back to his native land.”
Scribner revisits Russia again in the three CAS annual Christmas concerts. The program for the two evening performances consists of Russian carols, Christmas classics, sing-alongs and popular standards. The afternoon of Christmas Eve, however, will feature a special performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.” Audience members wishing to remain afterward will be treated by the musicians playing even more beautiful Russian works.
Sandwiched between the November and December concerts are one with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli at the Verizon Center and the family Christmas concert, “Why the Chimes Rang.”
The final concert of the season is a tribute to the maestro celebrated with his many colleagues and collaborators. Rather than marking the end of an era, it will point to the future that Scribner envisions by showcasing the beauty and wonder of great choral works spanning centuries. Thus, he passes the torch to a new generation.
