Caspar Frantz

Artist photo of Caspar Frantz - Piano

Born in Kiel, Germany, Caspar Frantz grew up in an artistic environment as the son of an art historian and a cello-playing lawyer. He received his first piano lessons at the age of seven and also enjoyed an extensive musical upbringing. As a child, for example, he was an enthusiastic listener at the rehearsals of the Schleswig Holstein Music Festival – an institution to which he was to return twenty years later as a soloist and chamber musician.

Now a professor of chamber music at the University of Music and Theatre “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig, Caspar Frantz studied with Renate Kretschmar-Fischer in Detmold and Matthias Kirschnereit at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre.

Postgraduate studies in chamber music took him to Berlin with his duo partner Julian Arp to Eberhard Feltz, a close friend and collaborator of György Kurtág. Both had a decisive influence on Caspar Frantz’s earnest and humorous musical personality and promoted his constant striving for artistic integrity as well as his search for something genuinely musical, which for him is to be found in every work.

Numerous master classes, for example, with Elisabeth Leonskaja or Maria Joăo Pires, also pointed the way for his career as a soloist, chamber musician and lied accompanist. He can be experienced in all functions equally – as a soloist, for example, with the MDR Symphony Orchestra, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, or as an interpreter of the works of Robert Schumann, which he recorded on a historic IBACH grand piano in 2015.

In addition to his regular duo partner Julian Arp, he also works with Antje Weithaas, Sabine Meyer, Bryn Terfel and Anna Prohaska, with whom he performs in a wide variety of formations worldwide. Together with Julian Arp, he has not only won numerous prizes (German Music Competition 2006, Premio Vittorio Gui 2006, etc.), the two of them also founded the Zeitkunst Festival in Berlin.

Caspar Frantz and Julian Arp have already released several CDs, including a complete recording of Felix Mendelssohn's works for cello and piano in 2009 and the album Time isn’t passing in 2012, on which György Kurtág and J. S. Bach shed light on each other musically.

Picture: Michael Brus


The artist's homepage:

linkhttp://www.casparfrantz.com

CDs released by GENUIN

with Caspar Frantz

CD album cover 'Arpeggio' (GEN 23820) with Julian Arp, Caspar Frantz

Arpeggio

In Memoriam Klaus Arp
Werke von Franz Schubert, Klaus Michael Arp, Johann Sebastian Bach und Astor Piazzolla

Julian Arp Cello
Caspar Frantz Piano

GEN 23820  –  3.2.2023

CD album cover 'Bach & Kurtág' (GEN 12256) with Julian Arp, Caspar Frantz

Bach & Kurtág

Werke für Violoncello und Klavier

Julian Arp Cello
Caspar Frantz Piano

GEN 12256  –  1.10.2012

CD album cover 'Duo Arp Frantz' (GEN 89133) with Julian Arp, Caspar Frantz

Duo Arp Frantz

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy - Gesamtwerk für Violoncello und Klavier

Julian Arp Cello
Caspar Frantz Piano

GEN 89133  –  23.1.2009

CD album cover 'Duo Arp Frantz' (GEN 87093) with Julian Arp, Caspar Frantz

Duo Arp Frantz

Werke für Cello und Klavier von Chopin, Schumann, Debussy und Janácek

Julian Arp Cello
Caspar Frantz Piano

GEN 87093  –  24.8.2007