Scott Dunn

Vladimir Dukelsky (Vernon Duke), Piano Concerto in C (Scott Dunn, piano)

Vladimir Dukelsky (Vernon Duke) became a kind of omni-present shadow to Sergei Prokokiev in the circle of creative geniuses who composed Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe, one more refugee in a group of Russian patronage system trained artists in exile. Prokokiev, his childhood friend from their composition class with Reinhold Gliere at the Kiev Conservatory, reviewed the Piano Concerto in C, saying that it was “full of superior melodies, very well designed, harmonically beautiful and not too ‘modernist’.” Igor Stravinsky, had him perform as one of the four pianists, along with Francis Poulenc, George Auric and Vittorio Rieti in the Ballet Russe’s London premiere of his Les Noces. All except Rieti would go on to compose scores for upcoming ballet seasons. His Piano Concerto became his passport into a sub-group known as Les Nouveaux Jeunes, forerunners to Les Six (Georges Auric, Louis Aurey, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Germaine Tailleferre). Conductor Sergei Koussevitsky introduced his First Symphony on the same program as Prokokiev’s Fiery Angel as if they were companion compositions, reflecting their shared ongoing musical dialogue.

An ocean away, George Gershwin had been enchanted by the second theme of the Piano Concerto in private rehearsals by Dukelsky. Some of the few remaining first hand accounts from someone who knew Gershwin well is preserved here in an article Vernon Duke wrote called, “Gershwin, Schillinger and Dukelsky: Some Reminiscences”:

“I first encountered George Gershwin’s name in 1921 in Constantinople I was then seventeen, just out of a Russia torn by the Civil War that followed the October Revolution of 1917. In the club run for the Russian refugees by the YMCA, I found some American popular songs—mostly Turkish reprints. Except for Irving Berlin’s All By Myself, with its fine ragtime gait, I was not impressed with the banal syncopations of this music.

Then one day a Turkish edition of a piece bewilderingly entitled Swanee by composer bewilderingly named Gershwin fell into my hands. The dash and drive, the rhythmic vigor, and, above all, the unmistakable musicality of the number made me sit up instantly.

I reached the United States in 1922 and met George in the same year through Eva Gauthier, the fine artist who did so much for new music. Miss Gauthier sang some pretentious and excessively dissonant songs of mine at a concert of the International Composers’ Guild. I don’t remember Gershwin’s reaction to them, but I do remember mine to George’s playing of his tunes. To anyone who has not heard Gershwin play, his piano magic hard to describe.

Gershwin impressed me as a superbly equipped and highly-skilled composer—not just a concocter of commercial jingles. His extraordinary left hand performed miracles in counter-rhythms, shrewd canonic devices, and unexpected harmonic shifts.”

George Gershwin, Swanee from Artis Wodehouses’s Gershwin Plays Gershwin: The Piano Rolls)

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.