FROM KATHERINE NEEDLEMAN: “THE PAPER TRAIL” AND FLORENCE PRICE’S “RAINBOW WALTZ”

First, a recapitulatory preamble: Some readers of these pages already know about the affront to the music and memory of Florence B. Price committed by noted Price advocate Yannick Nézet-Séguin, composer/conductor Wolfgang Dörner, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in that orchestra’s annual New Year’s Concert (2025/2026). In an earlier post, troping the familiar cliché that “plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery” and positing that the opposite of plagiarism (presenting another’s work as one’s own) is forgery (presenting one’s own work as another’s), I stated that if “plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery” and plagiarism’s opposite is forgery, then what happened to Florence Price in Vienna in that concert was the sincerest form of insult.

I stand by those words. And despite Nézet-Séguin’s disappointingly disingenuous ass-covering response to questions (reported by Slipped Disc) that Dörner’s original composition performed with attribution to Price was one that “highlighted connections to the Viennese waltz tradition,” the fact remains that neither Price’s melodies, nor her harmonies, nor her rhythms, nor her form were heard in that concert. If Dörner’s piece – for that’s what it was – “highlighted connections to the Viennese waltz tradition” but was ultimately still Florence Price’s own Rainbow Waltz, then Charles Ives’s “Concord” Sonata “highlighted connections to the American piano-sonata tradition” but was still ultimately Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Or, if you’d prefer, Mendelssohn’s Elijah “highlighted connections to the English oratorio tradition” but was, at the end of the day, still Handel’s Messiah.

Such arguments are nonsense taken straight from the Evasive Maneuvers 101 playbook – because ultimately, we’re still left to wonder why a noted Price advocate, one of the world’s greatest orchestras, and a respected composer thought it was a good idea, or even remotely acceptable, to suppress Florence Price’s own melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and forms and substitute Dörner’s own for them – and then, on top of that suggestion that Price’s music was somehow inadequate for the sanctified Viennese tradition, to ascribe their own (competent but, let’s face it) bland music to her.  Why?

Florence Price’s actual Rainbow Waltz is manifestly superior in melodic invention, harmonic and rhythmic language, and form to the forgery that appeared under her name in Vienna under Nézet-Séguin’s baton. I’ll go even further: as of this writing I have edited and published 159 compositions of Florence Price. More are forthcoming. And Every. Single. One. of them, published and not, is superior to the competent but bland piece that the Viennese reported as her work. They debased Price’s name by substituting Dörner’s work for hers.

SO TO THE POINT: Oboist and ever-intrepid virtuosa blogger Katherine Needleman has kept after this, yesterday posting to her Substack (and Facebook) a new, beautifully documented post that reveals the legal sleight of hand that Nézet-Séguin and the VPO have employed in order to avoid admitting what they did: in Austria’s music right’s society (AKM: Autoren, Komponisten und Musikverleger) – the counterpart to BMI or ASCAP, roughly. To put it briefly, they backed off of the attribution to Price, simply stating that the Rainbow Waltz was “Public Domain” (DP = “Domaine publique”).

I suppose we are expected to be relieved that, when legal matters came into play, they did not persevere with the forgery. Oddly, however, the album of the concert is not so honest – with the result that, as Katherine Needleman puts it, “Florence Price’s name is doing extraordinary commercial work” – and the Viennese are making money off her name without even had the decency to play her music.

Enough. Please read Needleman’s SubstackPost – which gets into the weeds in a brilliant or perhaps revelatory fashion.

And then, in order to do honor to Ms. Price where the Viennese have so shamelessly dishonored her, please consider playing, or listening to, the actual Rainbow Waltz.

You’ll be glad you did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o0yaFKovXQ