THE PAPER TRAIL

Austrian copyright records, Spotify data, and the so-called Vienna Philharmonic forgery/mutiliation

When I wrote about Florence Price’s Rainbow Waltz which was performed on classical music’s biggest stage at the Vienna Philharmonic’s hugely-broadcast 2026 New Year’s Concert, I was asking a musical question: was this piece actually Florence Price’s music? The streaming numbers I noted back in January were striking. Since then, the numbers have kept moving, and so has the paper trail. Here are some updates.

Now, let me first tell you about AKM because I just learned about it this morning when these screenshots arrived in my DMs.

AKM — Autoren, Komponisten und Musikverleger — is Austria’s music rights collection society. Think ASCAP or BMI, but Austrian. When music is performed or recorded in Austria, AKM tracks who wrote it, who arranged it, and who gets paid. What appears in AKM’s registry isn’t opinion or marketing. It’s the legal and economic structure of who owns what.

Here are records from AKM’s member portal showing the registrations for three works performed at the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Concert. The comparison is instructive.

In the Ferdinanduswalzer, the Vienna Philharmonic’s house arranger, Wolfgang Dörner, arranged a piece by Constanze Geiger. This was sort of a big deal because Geiger was the first woman composer ever to be featured on this important Vienna Philharmonic program. We are talking since the 1939 inception of this program (as a Nazi propaganda show), so over like 1,200 to 1,500 opportunities, and this was the first time they chose to program a piece by a woman composer. Geiger was an Austrian composer and pianist who died in 1862. In the AKM registry, she appears by full name — GEIGER, CONSTANZE — with her IP number, as composer. Dead Austrian woman: named and credited. Check. Very much like how Anton Bruckner, a composer long accepted by the VPO establishment, was treated in the year prior when Mr. Dörner arranged his Quadrille.

Now, let’s look at the Rainbow Waltz and Florence Price. Florence Price would be the second woman to appear in this concert setting, and the first Black composer. (That’s if you count this as an appearance.)

Under Komponistin, the AKM registry does not list Florence Price. It lists two letters: DP.

DP stands for Domaine Public. Public domain. It is the designation used when there is no identified composer, or when the system has decided not to name one: anonymous, unknown. Or something so ubiquitous that it belongs to us all, like America, The Beautiful or the Star-Spangled Banner or Happy Birthday.

Wolfgang Dörner appears in the Rainbow Waltz registry with his full name and his permanent IP number as arranger, just as he does for Bruckner and Geiger’s waltzes. He is a named, compensated presence in this system for these works. Constanze Geiger is named. Anton Bruckner is named. But this Rainbow Waltz’s Florence Price? She’s just DP.

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Now look at what Spotify shows, as of this morning, March 14, 2026.

The Blue Danube, perhaps the most famous piece of orchestral music in the Viennese repertoire, the piece that closes every New Year’s Concert, has 34,082 plays on this album.

The Rainbow Waltz has 80,569.

It outstreams the Blue Danube by more than two to one. It outstreams every Strauss waltz on the album. The surrounding repertoire clusters mostly between 30,000 and 50,000 plays. The Rainbow Waltz is the second most-streamed track on the entire 19-track album, and it is not close.

Florence Price’s name is doing extraordinary commercial work. In a genre where these numbers would be considered remarkable under any circumstances, her name is pulling listeners at a rate that dwarfs composers who have been in this concert’s repertoire since its Third Reich beginnings.

But in the AKM registry, the place where money and rights flow, she is just DP.

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I want to be precise about what I am and am not claiming. Rights arrangements are complicated, and I am an oboist, not an entertainment lawyer.

But I can tell you what these AKM screenshots say. Wolfgang Dörner or whoever filed these records about his arrangement extended to Constanze Geiger and Anton Bruckner the documentary credit not extended to Florence Price. Remember that I noted in January that I could identify very little musical material in Vienna’s Rainbow Waltz that corresponds to the publicly available piano score of Price’s original. If the musical substance of this piece is largely not Florence Price’s, and the composer is registered in the Austrian rights system as anonymous, one must ask:

Is this actually a composition by Wolfgang Dörner, presented under a more marketable, fashionable name designed to check a DEI box?

Because the only difference I can see between Florence Price, Constanze Geiger, and Anton Bruckner — all dead composers — is that Florence Price was Black and there is real question about if her music actually was heard or not.

I am not the only one asking. John Michael Cooper, professor of music at Southwestern University and editor of an ongoing scholarly series of sixty-four editions of previously unpublished works by Florence Price published with G. Schirmer, has written about this at length on his own platform. Cooper is arguably the foremost living scholarly authority on Price’s work, and his conclusion is unambiguous. In his words: “This is not an arrangement; it’s a different piece.” He calls what happened in Vienna a forgery, not a matter of creative interpretation, but the presentation of someone else’s music under Florence Price’s name. His definition is precise: “plagiarism is presenting another’s work as one’s own, while forgery is presenting one’s own work as someone else’s.” By that definition, he argues, what the Vienna Philharmonic performed on January 1, 2026 was a forgery. His conclusion: “what happened in Vienna was the sincerest form of insult to Florence Price.”

Cooper also notes pointedly that Florence Price wrote multiple waltzes that would have been entirely suitable for this program. The question he keeps returning to, and that nobody has answered, is why Dörner did not arrange her actual music. “I can think of no answer,” Cooper writes, “that does not make me cringe.”

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The Vienna Philharmonic’s response to all of this has been notable. According to BackstageClassical, a German-language classical music publication, composer Alexander Strauch reports that when ORF inquired whether the orchestra recognized that the orchestral version differed from the original piano score, they answered simply: Ja.¹ Then they referred reporters to forthcoming coverage in the English-language press. I have not been able to locate that coverage. Wolfgang Dörner has not commented that I can see. Sony Classical has not commented that I can see. The silence from the parties most directly responsible has been, at this point, absolute, so far as I can tell.

Axel Brüggemann, the editor of BackstageClassical, described the Dörner arrangement in an open letter to Vienna Philharmonic chairman Daniel Froschauer as “Austrianized beyond recognition: no more jazzy blue notes, the themes don’t match, plus a saccharine introduction. That’s not an arrangement. That’s a mutilation.”

Brüggemann's letter to Froschauer, and a second open letter addressed directly to the concert’s charismatic conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, were both published by BackstageClassical in February 2026 and are available at backstageclassical.com or in English translation at this footnote.²

We now also have Froschauer on record in Die Presse, Austria's newspaper of record, speaking to this directly³. According to that interview, including Florence Price was indeed Nézet-Séguin's “heartfelt wish.” He had originally wanted to program the third movement of her Third Symphony. Froschauer told him it required too many additional instruments and would, in his words, “burst the sonic and stylistic framework of the New Year's Concert.” (Too many instruments? Really? Does VPO not have the budget, or not have a large enough orchestra?) So they settled on the Rainbow Waltz instead. Froschauer acknowledges that Dörner “took somewhat greater liberties” with it than with other arrangements, adding an introduction and a more dramatic finale. “We never intended to mislead anyone. But perhaps we can all learn something from this discussion.” And his conclusion, which Brüggemann subsequently mocked: “Now the whole world is talking about Florence Price.” This reminds me of a series of comments Andrew Appel left on my page.)

Brüggemann’s reply: “No: the world is talking about you.”

According to a February 9 entry⁴ on the blog Slippedisc (and I want to be clear this is their account of his statement, as I cannot locate it anywhere on his own media channels), Yannick Nézet-Séguin said that Dörner’s arrangement “highlighted connections to the Viennese waltz tradition,” while a new arrangement by Valerie Coleman, commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, “emphasizes an American sonority.” He framed the two arrangements as complementary ways of bringing Price’s music to different audiences. Brüggemann responded directly to this logic in his open letter to Nézet-Séguin: “You want jazz, but without the jazz? You want a Black image, but in white?”

Different “arrangements,” different “sonorities,” and different “audiences…” What Nézet-Séguin still did not address is whether what Vienna performed was, in any meaningful way, Florence Price’s music at all.

It raises the question for me: what did the Austrian audience actually want, then? How did they need Florence Price’s music to be brought to them? As a “forgery?” As a “mutiliation?” Were they not ready for the real thing?

The Vienna Philharmonic, Wolfgang Dörner, and Sony Classical should explain this. Not to me, but to the public streaming this music under her name, who have made her the most-streamed composer on a program otherwise built around the Strauss family.

Hey guys, I’m asking you: is this indeed Florence Price’s music? And if so, who is getting paid?

If not, and if what we heard was just anonymous and “DP,” why are the Vienna Philharmonic, Spotify, Mr. Nézet-Séguin, and Mr. Dörner using her name at all? Would that not be the definition of exploitation and misappropriation?

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3. https://www.diepresse.com/20553596/neujahrskonzert-war-der-walzer-von-florence-price-gefaelscht

Translation by Google:

New Year’s Concert: Was Florence Price’s Waltz a Fake?

The Vienna Philharmonic and conductor Nézet-Séguin allegedly deceived the world with the “Rainbow Waltz” and misappropriated the work of the African American composer—a criticism currently circulating online. Daniel Froschauer, Chairman of the Philharmonic, addressed these concerns in an interview with *Die Presse*.

Including a piece by Florence Price in the New Year’s Concert was his “heartfelt wish”: Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Including a piece by Florence Price in the New Year’s Concert was his “heartfelt wish”: Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.APA

February 6, 2026 at 10:55 AM
by Walter Weidringer

On January 1st, pure bliss reigned in the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein—and even though their previous, albeit infrequent, encounters had been promising, New Year’s Concert debutant Yannick Nézet-Séguin managed to exceed even the expectations of the Vienna Philharmonic. Not to mention the enormous wave of goodwill the conductor received on social media. Since then, the live recording has reached number one on the German classical music charts and, in Austria, has even debuted at number one on the pop charts. Now, however, criticism is growing increasingly vocal—specifically regarding one of the two female composers featured in the program: the African American Florence Price. Or, to be more precise: regarding the specific version of her “Rainbow Waltz” that was performed.

Is This Still an Arrangement? The fact that the original piano version and the orchestral arrangement—created by the long-time New Year’s Concert arranger, conductor, and musicologist Wolfgang Dörner—differ significantly was already evident last week on the radio station Ö1 (on the program *Vorgestellt*) through a direct side-by-side comparison. Forgery? Misappropriation? Sacrilege? Such are the accusations being voiced on social media and music blogs—for instance, by musicologist John Michael Cooper, oboist, professor, and activist Katherine Needleman, and composer Alexander Strauch.

Daniel Froschauer, Chairman of the Philharmonic, has now clarified the situation to the newspaper *Die Presse*: It was Yannick’s “heartfelt wish” to include Price in the program—ideally, the third movement of her Third Symphony. “I heard this work performed in Vienna under Muti and was absolutely thrilled,” Froschauer recounts. However: “I told Yannick right away that it calls for too many additional instruments. That would burst the sonic and stylistic framework of the New Year’s Concert.” Consequently, the focus shifted to piano works, and—after much back-and-forth—they settled on the aforementioned “Rainbow Waltz.”

Froschauer: “It didn’t bother anyone”

Froschauer notes that arrangements are, in fact, standard practice for the New Year’s Concert—partly because a piano piece requires orchestration to begin with, and partly to stylistically “assimilate” the works into the program and give them a little musical boost. “Dörner—a consummate professional—also prefaced the *Bruckner-Quadrille* (performed in 2024 under Christian Thielemann—Ed.) with a highly fitting introduction,” recounts Froschauer; “that didn’t bother anyone. And when, prior to the 2025 New Year’s Concert, I showed Muti the score for Constanze Geiger’s *Ferdinandus-Walzer*, he immediately remarked: ‘It’s missing a conclusion; we’ll simply play the first waltz again at the end!’”—the customary rounding-off in the style of the Strauss dynasty.

Dörner likely took somewhat greater liberties in arranging the *Rainbow Waltz*—furnishing it with an introduction and a more dramatic finale—but, as Froschauer asks: “Does that mean we shouldn’t perform Geiger or Price at all? We never intended to mislead anyone. But perhaps we can all learn something from this discussion.” In any case, one thing brings satisfaction to the Philharmonic board member: “Now the whole world is talking about Florence Price.”

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