Justus Frantz

Justus Frantz (born 18 May 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.

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.

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 repeatedly criticized the sanctions imposed on Russia, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "cultivated man".