2026 looked to be a renaissance year for the composer Florence Price,<\/a> a Black woman who made music in Chicago that is now being championed by the classical music world more than 70 years after her death.<\/p>\n Minnesota Opera premiered a new work<\/u><\/a> in February about her life, and Cambridge University Press just released a scholarly companion to her music. Concerts featuring her compositions are scheduled everywhere from Baltimore to New York City this year.<\/p>\n But a New Year\u2019s Concert in Vienna featuring her music \u2014 one of the most lauded events of the classical world in one of the genre\u2019s most lauded venues, the Musikverein \u2014 has kicked up controversy for, arguably, not <\/i>featuring her music at all.<\/p>\n Florence Price surged to prominence when a tranche of previously unknown scores were recovered from her summer home outside Kankakee, Illinois in 2009.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/p>\n Special collections, University of Arkansas Library <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n Her 1939 piece \u201cRainbow Waltz,\u201d originally written for piano, was arranged for orchestra and conducted by Yannick N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin in the performance. But the piece that was played that day was so heavily stylized and reharmonized that online commentators erupted in criticism that has not ebbed<\/u><\/a> in the months since the concert.<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n Scholar Alexandra Kori Hill, who <\/b>co-edited the new Cambridge companion<\/u><\/a> on Price\u2019s music, describes \u201cRainbow Waltz\u201d as rooted in 20th-century \u201cAfro-American pastoralism.\u201d That atmosphere, she says, is lost in the arrangement played in Vienna.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the classical tradition, there\u2019s an expectation of performing the original of something, particularly with arrangements of music by a person whom we\u2019re still starting to understand stylistically,\u201d Hill said. \u201cIt becomes even more urgent when it is music by a person that comes from an underrepresented or systemically marginalized group of people.\u201d<\/p>\n Price biographer Douglas Shadle says Price\u2019s life was full of ambivalent victories. Her 1933 Chicago Symphony debut<\/u><\/a> is often hailed as a breakthrough for her and Margaret Bonds<\/u><\/a>, another Black Chicago composer who soloed on the same program. Less mentioned is the overture by John Powell, an avowed white supremacist, which opened the program.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels like a very Price situation,\u201d Shadle said of the New Year\u2019s episode. \u201cThe positive, again, has this strange counterweight to it.\u201d<\/p>\n Posthumously, Price (pictured at left, with her daughter) became the first composer of color and, indeed, the first non-European composer ever featured in the Vienna Philharmonic\u2019s New Year\u2019s Concert, one of the biggest events in classical music.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/p>\n Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n Born in Little Rock, Ark. and a longtime resident of Chicago\u2019s South Side, Price surged to prominence when a tranche of previously unknown scores were recovered<\/u><\/a> from her summer home outside Kankakee, Illinois in 2009.<\/p>\n Most of those rediscovered works were not registered with the United States Copyright Office prior to their discovery, meaning many \u2014 including \u201cRainbow Waltz\u201d \u2014 are now public domain.<\/p>\n Price never heard her music performed abroad. She was planning a trip to Europe the year she died, in 1953. Posthumously, she became the first composer of color and, indeed, the first non-European composer ever featured in the Vienna Philharmonic\u2019s New Year\u2019s Concert, one of the biggest events in classical music.<\/p>\n The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, pictured here in January 2020, performs a traditional New Year\u2019s concert at the golden hall of Vienna\u2019s Musikverein, in Vienna, Austria, each year. The 2026 concert featured a controversial arrangement of Price\u2019s music. <\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div><\/div>\n The concert reaches around 50 million viewers in more than 150 countries every year, via TV broadcasts, public radio and online streams.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t your average classical concert. Since the New Year\u2019s Concert began in 1939 \u2014 as a Nazi-era fundraiser, as the Vienna Philharmonic has more openly acknowledged<\/u><\/a> in recent years \u2014 waltzes and other Viennese light music have been the evening fare. \u201cThe Blue Danube,\u201d<\/u><\/a> by \u201cwaltz king\u201d Johann Strauss Jr. (1825\u20131899), is one such famous staple. So is the clapalong \u201cRadetzky March\u201d<\/u><\/a> by the composer\u2019s father, Johann Strauss Sr. (1804\u20131849). Besides Price\u2019s \u201cRainbow Waltz,\u201d this year\u2019s program featured works by exclusively Austrian composers, including both Strausses.<\/p>\n![\"Florence](\"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/cb4f1d0\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2554x1481+0+0\/resize\/840x487!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Fcd%2F30%2F67079ca4427b8f95d8d1e6860977%2Fbe6aa2e7bb2ec7029bc7c05ee91a6c77.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n<\/picture>\nA rearranged \u201cRainbow Waltz\u201d <\/b><\/h3>\n
![\"Austria](\"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/2529446\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5817x3747+0+0\/resize\/840x541!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F9f%2F0d%2F39364fc94db08eaaa3bfa030b767%2Fap20001466506035.jpg\")
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