Dieter Flury (born July 8, 1952) is a Swiss classical flutist who was the principal flute of the

Vienna Philharmonic Vienna Philharmonic (VPO; ) is an orchestra that was founded in 1842 and is considered to be one of the finest in the world. The Vienna Philharmonic is based at the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria. Its members are selected from the orchestra of ...

from 1981 to 2017. He also served as the orchestra's managing director from 2005 to 2014.

Early life

Flury studied with Hans Meyer and André Jaunet at the Zurich University of Music, where he graduated in 1976. He also completed a mathematics degree at the same time at

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

Career

Flury joined the Vienna State Opera Orchestra in September 1977 and the Vienna Philharmonic in 1981 as the principal flute. He was succeeded by Silvia Careddu in 2017. He has been a full-time professor at the University of Fine Arts in

Graz Graz () is the capital of the Austrian Federal states of Austria, federal state of Styria and the List of cities and towns in Austria, second-largest city in Austria, after Vienna. On 1 January 2025, Graz had a population of 306,068 (343,461 inc ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

since 1996.

Controversy

Flury has sparked controversy over comments that accepting

women A woman is an adult female human. Before adulthood, a female child or adolescent is referred to as a girl. Typically, women are of the female sex and inherit a pair of X chromosomes, one from each parent, and women with functional u ...

and/or people of color into the Vienna Philharmonic takes away from the musical tradition of the

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * String instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, ...

and that musicians outside of Europe do not have the same standards. In 1996, he commented: He also told

Westdeutscher Rundfunk (; "West German Broadcasting Cologne"), shortened to WDR (), is a German public broadcasting, public-broadcasting institution based in the States of Germany, Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its main office in Cologne. WDR is a const ...

that accepting women would be "gambling with the emotional unity that this organism currently has".Westdeutscher Rundfunk Radio 5, "Musikalische Misogynie", 13 February 1996
transcribed by Regina Himmelbauer
/ref>

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Flury, Dieter Living people 1952 births Players of the Vienna Philharmonic Swiss classical flautists Musicians from Zurich ETH Zurich alumni Zurich University of the Arts alumni People from Küsnacht