LOSING FOCUS, AGAIN:

THE POINT DISAPPEARS INTO THE MISTS, BUT THE VIENNA PHILHARMONIC’S FORGERY OF FLORENCE PRICE’S RAINBOW WALTZ REMAINS

In their widely viewed annual New Year’s concert, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra played a piece that they said was Florence Price’s Rainbow Waltz even though it wasn’t. Those who know Price’s music and respect her, both as a composer and as a human being, immediately cried foul, led by intrepid oboist, composer, and blogger Katherine Needleman. I also pointed out that presenting one’s own work as the work of someone else is the operational definition of forgery.  

Since then. the VPO’s misrepresentation of what they played – and didn’t play – has gotten some attention in the press.  But apart from an incisive piece by Tom Service in The Guardian, this reporting has unfortunately been dilatory, a distraction. For example, the observation that Price’s actual Rainbow Waltz had roots in the U.S. pastoral tradition would be relevant if the VPO had played Price’s actual Rainbow Waltz, or if the piece they played had roots in the U.S. pastoral tradition. Neither of those things is the case, however. Consequently, they serve only to offer a much-needed evasive maneuver, raising questions that divert attention from the real issues here.

So let’s be clear: there are two questions that Nézet-Séguin and the VPO must answer forthrightly in order for public unhappiness about their forgery to go away:

1. Why did they say that a piece that, apart from one fifteen-bar stretch buried deep in the middle, was not by Florence Price was by Florence Price?

2. Why did they not play Florence Price’s Rainbow Waltz? This question has acquired new urgency in recent days with Peter Dobrin’s reporting in the Philadelphia Inquirer that the VPO had rejected Valerie Coleman’s arrangement of the Rainbow Waltz in order to create their forgery and Dobrin’s astute observation that “the Vienna Philharmonic slighted not just one, but two, Black female composers.”

Let me close with one last reminder of the VPO forgery. Here is Florence Price’s Rainbow Waltz as first published by Dr. Barbara Garvey Jackson with ClarNan Editions (here’s a digital download) and performed by Prof. Kevin Wayne Bumpers (not the first recording of the piece, but my favorite):

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

And here is what Nézet-Séguin and the VPO said was Florence Price’s Rainbow Waltz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iz2iGj7_bI

The two are not the same piece and should not be confused; Florence Price deserves better than to have her music suppressed in favor of the kitschy Viennese pastiche that was presented under her name in the VPO’s New Year’s concert.

First page of “Autograph A” (JMC designation) of Florence Price’s Rainbow Waltz (University of Arkansas Libraries, shelfmark MC 988a Box 18, folder 12); and first page of edition by Dr. Barbara Garvey Jackson, from Florence Beatrice Price: An Album of Piano Pieces [Fayetteville, AR: ClarNan Editions, 2016])

Will the VPO answer the two questions posed above? I doubt it. But with every day that they fail to do so their dishonor is redoubled.