Justus Frantz

Justus Frantz (born May 18, 1944 in Inowrocław, Poland, then Hohensalza, Germany) is a German pianist, conductor, and television personality.

Frantz began playing piano at the age of ten and later studied with Eliza Hansen and Wilhelm Kempff at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg under a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, or German National Scholarship Foundation. He and another man won second place in a competition by playing a duet for cello and piano. In 1967, he won an international musical competition hosted by a famous German television station. He first played with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan in 1970. In 1975, he played in his United States debut concert with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein, who became his lifelong friend. Other conductors with whom he has played include Carlo Maria Giulini and Rudolf Kempe. He founded the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in 1986 and became a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador in 1989, a post from which he has since retired. He also founded the Philharmonia of the Nations in 1995. From September 2013 Maestro Frantz serves as musical director of Israel Sinfonietta Beer Sheva.