Evelyn Barbirolli: 'Remarkably fine' oboist

Evelyn Rothwell, oboist: born Wallingford, Oxfordshire 24 January 1911; principal oboist, Scottish Orchestra 1933-36; oboist, Glyndebourne Festival Orchestra 1934-38; oboist, London Symphony Orchestra 1935-59; Professor of Oboe, Royal Academy of Music 1971-87; married 1939 John Barbirolli (Kt 1949, died 1970); died London 25 January 2008.

During the summer of 1931, Franz Lehár's operetta The Land of Smiles was playing at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. In the orchestra were Peter Barbirolli, a viola player, and Evelyn Rothwell, the principal oboe. Although Rothwell was then only 20 years old, she was already so impressive that Peter recommended her to his brother John Barbirolli, who was conducting Verdi and Puccini round the corner at Covent Garden and looking for a sub-principal oboe.

On 13 July, Rothwell received a note from someone apparently signing himself "John Barkworth", who invited her to play for him. Two days later, she went for her audition – and John Barbirolli and Evelyn Rothwell first met (Evelyn recorded in her diary that he "didn't behave like a foreigner in the least"). She joined the Covent Garden orchestra on 7 September that year and within days was playing Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers, La bohème, The Bartered Bride and Die Walküre.

For the next two years Rothwell was regularly busy in a number of orchestras. In 1933 Barbirolli was appointed conductor of the Scottish Orchestra (now the Royal Scottish National Orchestra) and at the start of the 1933/34 season he brought her to Glasgow as principal oboe; she was soloist in a Handel concerto. It was at about this time that Barbirolli's brief marriage to the singer Marjorie Parry collapsed and his feelings for Evelyn Rothwell began to grow in warmth. He was a copious correspondent (and she a copious diarist); his letters to her are touchingly affectionate. They were eventually married at a civil ceremony in 1939 (and towards the end of his life their marriage was confirmed by the Roman Catholic Church at a private service in Dublin).

Meanwhile Evelyn Rothwell's career went from strength to strength. Because the Scottish Orchestra was then part-time, she was also able to work at Glyndebourne, from 1934 to 1938, and with the London Symphony Orchestra (in which she was the first woman), from 1935 to 1939. In 1936 Henry Wood noted, of his Queen's Hall Orchestra, that "the woodwind was remarkably fine with . . . Miss Rothwell and Miss Boughton (oboes)".

That same year, John Barbirolli took over the New York Philharmonic as Toscanini's successor; he and Evelyn were often separated, though they managed a holiday together in France during the summer of 1938 and they honeymooned in Normandy the following year. When the Second World War broke out, on 3 September, John was on a liner in the mid-Atlantic but Evelyn – because of a difficulty over her visa – was left behind. Until she joined him in New York six weeks later he was very miserable. He was also deeply concerned about her safety: "You must only travel on a neutral ship", he wrote.

There now began a marriage which lasted for 31 years until John Barbirolli's death in 1970 and in which, it is clear, Evelyn was a pillar of loving strength. But she was certainly no doormat and her own career as a soloist – which Barbirolli nurtured with a quite proper professionalism – developed impressively.

In 1940, Evelyn Rothwell (she contined to perform under her maiden name) played the Pergolesi concerto, which Barbirolli had arranged for her, in Vancouver. Concertos by Corelli (arranged by Barbirolli), Cimarosa (Arthur Benjamin), Handel (Barbirolli and Charles Mackerras) and Marcello (arranged by Evelyn herself) emerged in due course. In 1948, during an Austrian tour by the Hallé Orchestra, she gave the first performance of the newly discovered Mozart concerto in the Salzburg Mozarteum. Later, she was to play, and record, concertos by Albinoni, Haydn, Strauss, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Vaughan Williams, as well as the baroque concertos already cited.

John Barbirolli was named conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in 1943 (and knighted in 1949). For the next 25 years until 1968, when her husband was made its Conductor Laureate, Evelyn Rothwell's life was inextricably bound up with the Hallé. She often toured with it, sometimes appearing as a soloist, and she accompanied her husband to Houston, Texas, when he took on the additional role of principal conductor of the Houston Symphony Orchestra in the early 1960s. He had meanwhile returned to the New York Philharmonic, as a guest, in 1958. Both Rothwell and Barbirolli were fêted and there was a memorable dinner at which Eleanor Roosevelt and Danny Kaye were guests.

In England, Rothwell had already published in 1952 Orchestral Studies and Bach Studies, followed by Oboe Technique (1957). She contributed to the Journal of the International Double Reed Society and was to publish The Oboist's Companion in 1977. She was in world-wide demand as an adjudicator.

In 1971 Evelyn Barbirolli was appointed a professor at the Royal Academy of Music. She was also honoured by Leeds University, the Royal College of Music (where she had studied under Leon Goossens), Trinity College and the Royal Northern College, to whom she in due course presented her own large collection of wind music. This included works she had commissioned from Gordon Jacob and Arnold Cooke, among others. To the Musicians Benevolent Fund, for sale at auction, she presented John Barbirolli's uniforms as a knight and two lots which she had inherited from Kathleen Ferrier, a close and beloved friend: Kathleen's own copy of Gluck's Orfeo (the last work she sang) and a still life by the singer, a painting known as her "opus 2" which was signed – characteristically – "Klever Kaff". At one auction Evelyn bought back, for herself, a full miniature score of Pelléas et Mélisande which had once been her husband's property.

Evelyn Barbirolli's last years were filled with adjudicating and giving good advice. She was President of the Incorporated Society of Musicians in 1981 and from 1983 served the Musicians Benevolent Fund for many years as a committee member. In 1993 she launched the Isle of Wight International Oboe Competition, an event of exceptional quality which stands as a lasting memorial to her.

Tall – much taller than her husband – and dignified, Evelyn's patrician nose belied a character both warm and refreshingly down-to-earth. Endlessly generous with her time and energy she was, despite increasingly unreliable knees, wonderfully hospitable. Lunch at her flat near Swiss Cottage in London was always memorable for good food (which she cooked herself), friendly laughter and – if one was lucky with the weather – for the pleasure of sitting in the ravishing garden which she had created behind it.

Evelyn and John Barbirolli chose not to have children, but she will be remembered by innumerable wind-players (many of them students) as fulfilling, ideally, the qualifications of parenthood: exacting but considerate, loving but not sentimental, direct and, above all, shiningly honest.

Robert Ponsonby

What was so remarkable about Evelyn Barbirolli, writes Margaret Campbell, was that despite being a gifted soloist in her own right and married to one of the world's great conductors, she remained modest and totally without any affectation. She was totally devoid of airs and graces and treated her gardener with as much respect as she would have a belted earl. As a person she was generous, vivacious, communicative and possessed of a sometimes wicked sense of humour.

Over the last few years, her health problems were considerable, but she never complained and was always optimistic that things would improve.