“A longtime Boston Symphony Orchestra flutist and musical trailblazer has died, the orchestra said Monday. Doriot Anthony Dwyer was 98,” writes William J. Kole in Monday’s (3/16) Associated Press. “Dwyer died Saturday in Lawrence, Kansas, the Boston Symphony Orchestra said…. Dwyer was the Boston Symphony’s principal flutist for nearly 40 years…. She joined the BSO in 1952, becoming just the second woman to serve as a principal in a prominent orchestra after Helen Kotas, who became principal horn of the Chicago Symphony in 1941. In the late 1950s … Dwyer accompanied the Boston orchestra on a tour of Russia and performed the long flute solo in Claude Debussy’s ‘Afternoon of a Faun’ during a concert in Moscow. ‘The concertgoers were so excited that a roar went up from the crowd and they carried her on their shoulders out into the streets,’ her daughter [Arienne Dwyer] said…. A grand-niece of famed suffragist Susan B. Anthony, Dwyer was an important force in enlarging the flute repertoire. Leonard Bernstein was among the prominent composers who wrote works for her. … She recorded numerous works before retiring from the BSO in 1990. After her retirement, she performed as a soloist with orchestras and quartets around the U.S., and taught extensively.”
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