One of the first women to be a professional orchestral woodwind player, Helen Gaskell was much loved in musical circles. She played with the BBC Symphony Orchestra from not long after its inception in 1930, and for decades after her retirement in 1965 she continued to fill her home with music lovers, students and an eclectic range of friends and acquaintances. A great lover of the ballet, she also played for many years with the Ballet Rambert, and was taught to dance by Sir Frederic Ashton.

In the late 1920s the press found her achievement remarkable. “If not the first woman musician engaged in the woodwind of an English symphony orchestra in London, Miss Helen Gaskell is certainly the first to hold the position of second oboe in Sir Henry Wood’s orchestra at the Promenade Concerts,” commented The Sphere in August 1927. Such comments amused Gaskell, but also rather embarrassed her, for she was self-effacingly interested in the music alone.

Gaskell was the second of three musical sisters born to the chief clerk of Bow Street Magistrates’ Court. An elder brother serving in the Royal Flying Corps was shot down and killed during the First World War. She was educated at St Paul’s Girls’ School, Hammersmith, where her music teacher, Gustav Holst, needed woodwind players and diverted her away from the violin in the direction of the oboe and cor anglais. Holst was an unconventional teacher, who hated textbooks and examinations. Gaskell’s music lessons were often practical affairs, with the pupils making up rounds and spending the rest of the lesson singing them.

She won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, but instead of spending the proceeds on her tuition fees she immediately invested in a season ticket to the Royal Opera House. As a result she was forced to take a job with a milliner to pay her way through the Academy, where she studied with Leon Goosens. Between lessons and curtain-up at Covent Garden she would frequently call in on her father’s office, where he would bake a potato for her on an open fire. On occasions she deputised for Goosens at the Kingsway Theatre in The Immortal Hour.

In 1934 the composer William Alwyn wrote a Sonata for Oboe and Piano for Gaskell and her sister, Lillian, which they performed at a New Music Society concert at the Royal Academy; some 11 years later Alwyn was to write his Suite for Oboe and Harp for her teacher. The sonata, however, was not published for 62 years. In 1936 Alan Richardson (1904-78) dedicated his oboe and piano work Roundelay to Gaskell, even though he was married to the oboist Janet Craxton.

A favourite of Sir Henry Wood, Gaskell often accompanied him on trips around the country, and in later years she particularly recalled their visits to Hull, where his music-making was just as enthusiastic as it was at the Proms.

Over more than 30 years with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Gaskell also played with Sir Malcolm Sargent, Rudolf Schwarz, Antal Dorati and Sir Adrian Boult (whom she accompanied to Bristol when the orchestra was evacuated there during the war).

In the mid-1930s she married Paul Marinari, a cellist in the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He was also a fine photographer, and in his spare time made watches and jewellery.The couple travelled regularly through France, on their way to see his family in Florence — though all too often they failed to get beyond St Tropez. He died of leukaemia in 1965, and at around the same time, approaching her 60th birthday, Gaskell chose to retire, after which, as she put it, she “never blew a note in anger again”.

She sold her instruments, and quite literally did not play again, but she kept a lively eye on the musical world. For many years she attended concerts and kept in touch with friends and colleagues. Students sought her advice, and her home at Tring was often full of happy improvisation.

She had no children.

Helen Gaskell, oboist, was born in Twickenham on January 14, 1906. She died at Tring, Hertfordshire, on October 7, 2002, aged 96.