Resurrection

Princeton Pro Musica will perform the Duruflé Requiem with accompaniment on Princeton University Chapel’s Mander-Skinner organ.

By: Susan Van Dongen
   A towering figure in 20th-century French music, Maurice Duruflé was physically just a little guy, standing around 5 feet tall.
   On a grand tour of the United States in 1971, Monsieur and Madame Duruflé made a stop in Central Jersey, where he accompanied a joint performance of his Requiem by the Princeton High School Chorus and the Trinity Cathedral Choir of Trenton. That’s when organist and Trenton native Nancianne Parrella met him.
   "It was one of the first tours they made of America," says Ms. Parrella, who lives in Princeton Junction. "My teacher, Albert Ludecke, had contacted them. He wrote to Duruflé’s agent and said that we had these wonderful combined choirs and we wanted to jointly sponsor the Duruflés to come and do the Requiem.
   "Monsieur was very short and didn’t speak English at all, although Madame did," she continues. "They came to our house about three times for dinner and we were worried about what to feed him, whether we would have the right wine and what not. After all that worry, all he wanted was milk. We had a wonderful time with them."
   This personal connection to the composer has given the Duruflé Requiem special resonance for Ms. Parrella, and she’s played it frequently.
   "I feel very connected to this work," she says. "It was such an amazing experience to do this with the composer. It adds a different dimension when you actually work with the person who wrote the music — it makes it come alive."
   The Duruflé Requiem comprises half of Princeton Pro Musica’s spring concert at the Princeton University Chapel on April 26. The program — rescheduled from the original date of March 1 — will spotlight the magnificent Mander-Skinner organ. Ms. Parella was originally slated to accompany the 120-voice chorale but had to bow out due to schedule conflicts with the April date.
   Instead, David Messineo, principal organist at Princeton University, will accompany the group, conducted by music director Frances Fowler Slade. (See story on Page 4.)
   The evening of music also includes the a cappella masterpiece Vespers by Sergei Rachmaninoff. In addition, there will be a pre-concert lecture by Mark Miller at 7 p.m.
   A longtime figure in this region’s sacred music milieu, as well as a beloved music educator who team-taught the choral music program at Princeton High School for almost 30 years, Ms. Parrella is catching her breath after a whirlwind couple of months. She’s just finished a series of rehearsals for the Brahms Requiem, which she performed with the orchestra and choir at New York’s Church of St. Ignatius Loyola April 8. As associate organist for St. Ignatius, Ms. Parrella is gearing up for a special recital on April 27, celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the church’s organ. She has another concert at St. Ignatius coming up on May 14, performing pieces by Jules Massenet and Charles Gounod.
   "Then I’ll go to the Spoleto Festival (in Charleston, South Carolina) with the Westminster Choir to accompany their concerts there," she says. "That’ll be June 6. When we get home we’ll finish recording with the Westminster Choir, (taping) in Princeton University Chapel. Then, in July, I’ll do a workshop in accompaniment at the summer session at Westminster Choir College."
   The recording session will add to Westminster Choir’s CD In the Shadow of the Towers, done for Public Radio International last summer, to mark the Sept. 11, 2001 anniversary.
   A listener gets exhausted hearing her personal and professional schedule, yet the musical activity doesn’t phase the 60-something Ms. Parrella, it just seems to energize her more.
   "It’s wonderful," she says. "I’m so lucky to be able to do it."
   Ms. Parella hasn’t tired of accompanying choirs since she first began to do so as a teen-ager — before she even enrolled in Trenton High School. That’s where Ms. Parrella met Mr. Ludecke, "the teacher who would change my life musically," she says.
   The former organist and choral director at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral also accompanied the Mercer County Chorus in years past. He recognized the young woman’s talent and invited her to choir rehearsals to learn the subtle art of accompaniment.
   "I sat with him and watched while he worked, and that’s how I started to learn how to accompany and how to play (the organ)," Ms. Parrella says. "Then I studied formally with him when I was a senior in high school. Later on, I often substituted for him at Trinity and we’ve kept up our association for years."
   The summer after graduation, as her classmates were enjoying their leisure time, Ms. Parrella really immersed herself in music, practicing the organ sometimes for eight hours a day.
   "(Mr. Ludecke) let me practice at the cathedral," says Ms. Parrella, who began her musical studies on piano. "I lived in Trenton, so I would just walk over there and practice all day."
   She went on to get a bachelor’s degree from Trenton State Teacher’s College (now The College of New Jersey) and taught music after graduation. Because of her full-time job, Ms. Parrella had to delay obtaining an advanced degree until the school launched a low-residency graduate level program for busy professionals. She was able to study with the late Vernon deTar at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, eventually earning her master’s degree.
   After her retirement from PHS in 1992, Joseph Flummerfelt, Scheide Chairman of Choral Music at Westminster Choir College, invited her to take a position there as accompanist for the Westminster Symphony Choir as well as accompanist and assistant director of the renowned Westminster Choir.
   Through her association with the symphonic choir, Ms. Parrella has performed with some of the country’s most prestigious orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlantic Symphony and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, collaborating with Wolfgang Sawallisch, Zdenek Macal and Kurt Mazur, among others. Ms. Parrella was organist for the NJSO’s first DVD recording of Ottorino Respighi’s Pines of Rome and was one of the organists for the recording of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem with the New York Philharmonic.
   In addition, Ms. Parrella directs the Chorus Angelorum at St. Ignatius Loyola and is regularly featured in the church’s Sacred Music in a Sacred Space concert series. She’s also quite familiar with Princeton Chapel’s Mander-Skinner organ since she often plays the noontime organ recitals there.
   The April 26 concert will really showcase the instrument. Duruflé was primarily an organist and the Requiem was originally conceived as an organ piece. Duruflé had been working on a suite for organ solo based on Gregorian chants from the traditional Mass for the dead. When his publisher commissioned a requiem, Duruflé expanded and transformed the material, providing orchestrations for full and chamber orchestras as well as a setting for organ alone. This performance will use the organ setting with a few solo instruments.
   "The Requiem is all based on Gregorian chant, so it has this very free, non-metrical feeling to it," Ms. Parrella says. "There’s no big ‘Dies Irae’ like in the Verdi or Mozart requiems, where there’s all this hell and damnation. It’s very hopeful and beautiful, and it’s so much a part of Duruflé himself.
   "He didn’t write a lot, but what he did, he really labored over. So Duruflé doesn’t have a large body of work, but what’s there is exquisite."
Princeton Pro Musica performs at the Princeton University Chapel, Washington and Nassau Streets, Princeton, April 26, 8 p.m. Frances Fowler Slade conducts, with organist David Messineo accompanying. Pre-concert lecture by Mark Miller at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $25-$30. For information, call (609) 683-5122. On the Web: www.princetonpromusic.org. Ms. Parrella and music at St. Ignatius Loyola on the Web: www.saintignatiusloyola.org/concerts