John de Lancie, 80; Virtuoso Oboist, Head of Curtis Institute of Music

John de Lancie, 80, a virtuoso oboist with the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1946 to 1977 and later director of the Curtis Institute of Music, died May 17 of leukemia at his home in Walnut Creek, Calif.

A native of Berkeley, De Lancie studied at Curtis in Philadelphia and began his career as an oboist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, then directed by Fritz Reiner.

During World War II, he played in the U.S. Army Band and, after meeting the elderly Richard Strauss while serving in defeated Germany, urged Strauss to write what became his only concerto for oboe and orchestra.

De Lancie was promoted to principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1954, when his Curtis instructor and mentor Marcel Tabuteau retired. A soloist on many of the orchestra’s recordings under the baton of Eugene Ormandy, De Lancie also played with the Philadelphia Woodwind Quintet and other small groups. He premiered Francaix’s “L’Horloge de Flore” for oboe and orchestra, which he had commissioned the French composer to create in 1959.

The oboist became director of the Curtis Institute in 1977, but aroused so much controversy, including the costly hiring of eccentric Romanian conductor Sergiu Celebidache to lead the Curtis orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1984, that he was forced to resign in 1985.

De Lancie later became the founding music dean of Miami’s New World School of the Arts and taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.