By Lehman
American Record Guide
31-Mar-2008

Born Vladimir Dukelsky in 1903, this composer studied in Kiev with Gliere before fleeing the Russian Revolution in 1920. Moving to New York City in 1922, he re-christened himself Vernon Duke at the suggestion of his pal George Gershwin and, along with chamber and orchestral music (including three symphonies), wrote ballets (one was a notable success for Diaghilev) and film music as well as songs for Broadway. Several of these last were commercial hits and have since become jazz and popular standards ('Autumn in New York', 'Taking a Chance on Love', 'April in Paris'). Duke was also a poet and made highly-regarded translations of modern American poetry into Russian. In addition he published his memoirs, and late in his life (he died in 1969) he wrote a clever, garrulous, gossipy polemic on American music called Listen Here that's aged pretty well, remaining lively and informative. His acid chapter on 'The Deification of Stravinsky' offers a fascinating up-close view of Russian emigre artists that should be required reading for anyone interested in those gifted, competitive, malicious, backbiting, embittered souls cast adrift by their benighted homeland.

There's an excellent program of Duke's songs sung by Dawn Upshaw on Nonesuch 79531 (July/Aug 1999), but his concert pieces were never much recorded. A couple of early LPs of chamber pieces came out on the Contemporary label, and (until now) just two works that I could find on CD: his charming early ballet Zephyr et Flore on Chandos 9766 (listed under Vladimir Dukelsky) and a short piano trio on Music & Arts 952. The two concertos and the seven-movement suite for solo piano titled Homage to Boston on this Naxos CD are first recordings.

Duke wrote his single-movement, 18 ­minute Piano Concerto in C in 1923 to fulfill Arthur Rubinstein's request for a "one-movement piano concerto, pianistically grateful and not too cerebral". (This must have happened almost exactly when Gershwin was writing Rhapsody in Blue, a work that Duke singles out in Listen Here as the first homegrown American masterpiece to gain international recognition.) For whatever reason, Duke never got around to orchestrating his concerto, and it was only scored in 1998, by pianist Scott Dunn (who plays it here), and first performed a year later.

The Cello Concerto and Homage to Boston are much later works, both completed in 1945. The Cello Concerto was commissioned and premiered (in 1947) by Koussevitzky and Piatigorsky, and the great Russian cellist played it several times in Europe.

Duke's music, as you'd predict, is audience-pleasing, modern-romantic, and cosmopolitan. There are more than a few echoes of Duke's friend Prokofieff, 12 years his senior-though not the older man's incisive bite or unparalleled melodic genius-and evidence of his admiration of Stravinsky, Poulenc, and Ravel. The solo writing in both concertos is expert and canny, with a nice balance of display and sentiment. The piano concerto has a vernacular flavor, often breaking out into breezy waltzes, with both lyrical and jaunty themes drawn from the same well as Duke's popular songs. It's an amiable but rather tossed-together item, lacking the juice needed to secure a place in the repertoire anytime soon.

The 1945 Cello Concerto is a full-scale, three-movement work lasting 27 minutes. This is a more assured and mature composition that achieves the persuasive stylistic and structural integrity that eluded Duke in his earlier piano concerto, enhanced by imaginative but transparent scoring that works wonderfully well for soloist and orchestra. Especially in this very-well-recorded and flat-out magnificent performance by cello soloist Sam Magill and the Russian Philharmonic led by Dmitri Yablonsky, Duke's Concerto seizes and rewards the listener's attention, approaching the stature of comparable works in the genre by Kabalevsky, Shostakovich, and Barber. The central adagietto in particular is moving and memorable, combining eloquence, nobility, and resignation -surely a response to the terrible war that was ending as Duke was writing this music.

With numbers titled 'Molly', 'The Poet and His Wife', 'Dining at the Ritz', 'Midnight Train', and so on, Homage to Boston is 12 minutes of affable, mildly jazzy, mildly wistful music that wouldn't be out of place in an upscale cocktail lounge. It's rather like Rorem at his most relaxed-pleasant, well-put-together, but nothing more than that. The discovery here is the fine Cello Concerto.

By R.E.B.
ClassicalCDReview.com
01-Jan-2008

Vernon Dukelsky was born in Russia in 1903 and studied with Reinhold Gliere at the Kiev Conservatory. A fellow student was Prokofiev who became a lifelong friend and mentor. In 1922, Dukelsky came to New York and became associated with some notable figures on the musical scene including George Gershwin who suggested he shorten his last name to "Duke." After hearing some of the young composer's piano works, Arthur Rubinstein suggested he compose for him "a one-movement piano concerto, pianistically grateful and not too cerebral," which resulted in the work heard on this CD, which never was orchestrated by the composer, nor performed during his lifetime. Although Rubinstein expressed some interest in the concerto, nothing came of it. In 1998, American pianist/conductor Scott Dunn orchestrated the concerto and played the premiere January 10, 1999 in Carnegie Hall with the American Composers Orchestra conducted by Dennis Russell Davies. It's easy to understand Rubinstein's lack of enthusiasm; this 18-minute concerto doesn't amount to much. However, Duke's Cello Concerto composed in 1945 is of considerably more substance and interest although hardly an unjustly neglected masterpiece. This was commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky and Gregor Piatigorsky who gave the premiere in January 1947 in Boston's Symphony Hall. Piatigorsky also performed the work with other orchestras at the time, but the concerto was neglected after that. This 3-movement 27-minute concerto is a work with plenty of opportunity for the soloist for virtuoso display. Performances on this CD are outstanding; Scott Dunn does what can be done with the piano concerto, and Sam Magill gives a masterful reading of the cello concerto. The disk is filled out with a short suite for solo piano, Homage to Boston, written at the same time as the cello concerto, with 7 short movements each with descriptive titles, one of which is a charming gavotte parody of Prokofiev.

By Uncle Dave Lewis
Allmusic.com
01-Nov-2007

American composer Vernon Duke was also publicly known by his given name as Vladimir Dukelsky, particularly in connection with his concert music and poetry. It is more common for posterity to refer to the composer as "Vernon Duke" whether in writing classical music or popular; the standards he wrote for musicals, such as "April in Paris" and "Autumn in New York" have such a strong jazz feel some have even developed the impression that Duke had to be an African-American! Actually, Duke was Russian-born, and in a purely cultural sense, this student of Glière and close friend to Prokofiev never got very far from his Russian roots in his concert music, though there, too, a trace of the telltale influence of Tin Pan Alley can be detected.

By David Denton
01-Dec-2007

Vernon Duke, as he became known in the United States, was born in Russia in 1903 as Vladimir Dukelsky, and at the age of twelve was admitted to the Kiev Conservatory as a composition student of Gliere, sharing that privilege with Prokofiev. The Revolution saw the family fleeing and eventually arriving in the States in 1922. There the young man drew interest from influential musicians including the pianist, Arthur Rubinstein, who suggested that he should write a Piano Concerto for him. That reached the stage of a two-piano score awaiting orchestration when Rubinstein took him to Paris where the young man, together with the composer, Georges Auric, on the second piano, played the concerto to Dyagilev. He requested the twenty-one year old to write a score for the Ballets Russes, the outcome being Zephyr et Flore to choreography by the great Leonide Massine. It was a success and probably put on hold the orchestration of the concerto, which, in the event was never completed. On his return to the States he became fascinated by musicals, and was, under his new name, Vernon Duke, to contribute to numerous shows, often working in conjunction with such lyricists as Ira Gershwin. Many of his songs became huge hits, his 'serious' scores, which included three symphonies and several ballets now residing in history books. The American pianist, Scott Dunn, became fascinated with the story of the unfinished concerto, and set about completing the orchestration, though in the short score Dukelsky had given no indication as to the instruments he required. Dunn decided to use a mix of style from other Dukelsky scores with a hint of Prokofiev. It was completed in 1999 and is totally persuasive, the piece quite lightweight in texture and would have been described as 'conventional' by the style of writing in the early 1920's. The Cello Concerto is a much more advanced score completed in 1945, after Duke's service in the Second World War, and with more of a suggestion of the sadness brought about by that conflict. It had been commissioned in 1942 by the great conductor, Sergey Koussevitzky, for the legendary cellist, Gregor Piatigorsky. It was they who gave the premiere with the Boston Symphony, Piatigorsky, who had worked with Duke on the solo part, placing it in his repertoire. The Homage to Boston was a picture of people and scenes related to Boston in seven sections for solo piano. That was also completed in 1945 and is a salon piece of attractive cameos. Scott Dunn makes out a good case for the work, the cello soloist in the concerto, Sam Magill, dealing readily with the score's many challenges. With the Russian Philharmonic and Dmitry Yablonsky on the rostrum, the orchestral playing is very good, and the sound quality throughout of high quality.