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The renowned Ukrainian-born American violinist, Louis Krasner, was taken to the USA at the age of 5. He had his first tuition on the violin when he was nine, but his family were so poor that from the age of 12 he paid for his own lessons by playing in local theatres, clubs and social gatherings. It was at a "smoker" that an eminent physician, impressed with his talent, introduced him to one of his patients, Mrs Arthur Livingston Kelly; she took him to the head of the England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where he was immediately accepted as a student and she continued to sponsor all his tuition and living expenses right up until he made his debut. At the Conservatory he studied violin with Eugene Gruenberg, who hailed from Vienna and had known Gustav Mahler; he introduced Krasner to Kreisler when he came to Boston. Krasner once said: "To me, the mark of a great teacher is the influence he has on you in later years, irrespective of what the original subject may have been." Krasner also studied composition with Frederick Shepherd Converse. Krasner graduated with honours in 1923, at the age of 20. The continued his studies in Europe with three great but widely differing teachers - Carl Flesch in Berlin, Lucien Capet in Paris and Otakar Ševčík in Písek, Czechoslovakia. In his opinion it was the sheer variety of their approach which contributed to his musical development in a way that would otherwise never have come about.
Louis Krasner's concert career began in Europe, where he championed the concertos of Joseph Achron and Alfredo Casella. He was based mainly in Vienna, where he made the acquaintance of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who aroused his interest in 20th-century music. Meanwhile he enjoyed a busy international career as a soloist, appearing with the Wiener Philharmoniker and Berliner Philharmoniker, at the BBC in London and in recitals throughout Europe. He also visited the USA and met Alfredo Casella, then conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, who invited him to give the first performance of his Violin Concerto.
In 1931 Louis Krasner heard Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck for the first time in New York and described the experience as "overwhelming". It was this that prompted him to commission in 1935 a violin concerto from Alban Berg, because he thought it would help "to break down the prejudice against 12-tone compositions as being rigidly intellectual and devoid of human concerns, which was the opposite of the truth". Krasner gave the premiere of the Alban Berg's Violin Concerto ("To the memory of an angel") on April 19, 1936 at Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona, at the 14th ISCM Festival, with Hermann Scherchen conducting the Pablo Casals Orchestra. British private premiere was on May 1, 1936 in London, at an invitation-only concert. Krasner was again the soloist, with Anton Webern conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This performance was recorded on acetate discs, which survived in Krasner's collection. The performance was broadcast on the BBC on Alban Berg's centenary, February 9, 1985, and was later released on CD. He also premiered Arnold Schoenberg's Violin Concerto on December 6, 1940 in Phildelphia, with Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. That same year he went to Cleveland to record the Alban Berg's Violin Concerto with Arthur Rodzinsky for Columbia. By this time he could no longer return to Europe, so when Rodzinsky offered him a chair in Cleveland, he accepted it. He was also for a time assistant concert-master under Fritz Reiner with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Among the American composers whose works he premiered were Roger Sessions, Henry Cowell and Roy Harris.
Louis Krasner retired from solo performing to become concert-master of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra under Dimitri Mitropoulos from 1944 to 1949. In 1949 he was appointed Professor of Music (violin and chamber music) at Syracuse University, New York, where he stayed until 1972 until he retired as Professor Emeritus. While there he established the Syracuse Society for Chamber Music which later led to the founding of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. He was also on the Faculty of the New England Conservatory and with the summer schools at Tanglewood from 1969. He sat on a number of juries of international competitions including the Leventritt and the Naumburg, and received several prestigious awards, including the 1983 Sanford Medal from Yale University and the 1995 Commonwealth Award. As a teacher he was greatly loved by his students and as a man respected for his modesty and his wisdom and his tireless efforts to help his fellow musicians. He made many recordings and published numerous writings on his art.
When Louis Krasner was 82, he was asked about the difficulties of playing contemporary music, in which he excelled. He compared the invention of the sewing machine, which we accepted and understood, with the microchip, which we accept but do not understand. "The language of the music of our day must necessarily be much more complex, if it represents our lives today. It may take another hundred years before it is accepted but I believe that it will be."
Louis Krasner married Adrienne Galimir (two daughters). He died in 1995 in Brookline, Massachusetts, aged 91. |
