Louis Krasner; Violinist Premiered Berg, Schoenberg Concertos

Louis Krasner, 91, a violinist who favored 20th-Century music and who premiered the Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg violin concertos. After retiring as a celebrated soloist, Krasner also had a lengthy career as a teacher--most recently at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Lenox, Mass. He was credited with having persuaded Berg to compose his lyrical concerto, now a part of the standard violin repertoire. Krasner came to the United States from Russia when he was 5 and began studying the violin when he was 9. He performed modern American violin concertos throughout Europe in the 1930s before meeting Berg, Anton Webern and other Schoenberg devotees in Vienna. After hearing Berg’s opera “Wozzeck,” he prevailed on the composer to write the violin concerto, hoping to gain further inroads for music based on Schoenberg’s controversial 12-tone writings. In Brookline, Mass. on Thursday.