To listen to Vladimir Dukelsky’s Piano Concerto in C attentively, is to become aware how little one knows about him. It is also to become aware of the gullibility with which we had accepted his more popular incarnation as Vernon Duke. At what moment and by what means this alias version of Sergei Prokokiev’s dear friend and Vladimir Horowitz’s classmate way back at the Kiev Conservatory fades into a montage of Vladimir Dukelsky is difficult to ascertain. Some people attribute it to the first performance of the concerto in 1999 as part of the “The Gershwin Circle,” a series of performances which focused on the international impact of American pianism, with George Gershwin and his music as a nucleus, presented by the American Composers Orchestra in Carnegie Hall.
This composition is Dukelsky-Duke’s ‘lost’ concerto, originally written in 1923 at the request of the rising concert pianist and Aeolian Duo-Art and AMPICO player piano recording artist, Arthur Rubinstein. Perhaps Arthur Rubinstein with his phrase about ‘a one-movement, pianistically grateful, not too cerebral’ piece gave momentum to this 20 year old Russian emigré who was playing the piano in restaurants and conducting and composing for vaudeville and burlesque. Or perhaps it was the phrase ‘go to Paris’ where a premiere would be easier for Rubinstein to stage. Vladimir Dukelsky went to Paris, Arthur Rubinstein did not. The ‘lost’ Piano Concerto in C stayed in its original two-piano score for 76 years until Scott Dunn orchestrated it for its 1999 premiere.
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