“Donald Peck, the principal flutist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1958 to 1999, died on Friday at his home in Chicago. He was 92,” writes Hannah Edgar in Monday’s (5/2) Chicago Tribune. “He left no survivors, with plans for a memorial service to be announced at a later date. In his 40-year tenure at the CSO, Peck was a constant…. Then-music director Fritz Reiner appointed him assistant principal flute in 1957, promoting him to principal in short order. From there, Peck played under music directors Jean Martinon, Georg Solti and Daniel Barenboim, performing in thousands of concerts and on more than 300 CSO recordings…. ‘He was the voice of the wind section for so many years,’ said CSO archivist Frank Villella. And what a voice it was. It could be soulful and brooding, with a somber duskiness, as in his haunting flute solo in Brahms’s Symphony No. 4… His 2007 autobiography [was titled] ‘The Right Place, the Right Time! Tales of Chicago Symphony Days.’ … Born Jan. 26, 1930, in Yakima, Washington, Peck played in the Seattle Youth Symphony and Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra as a young man before attending the Curtis Institute on a scholarship.”
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