Albert Frantz
Albert Frantz (b. 1974) began piano studies at the unusual age of seventeen, sparked by a sudden and passionate discovery of classical music. Under the tutelage of Steven H. Smith at Penn State University, where he sacrificed mathematics and science studies in favor of music and philosophy, he won first prizes at the 1995 Pennsylvania Music Teachers Association Collegiate Artist Competition and Penn State University's concerto competition (with Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand) after having played the piano for only four years. In 1998, after winning local, state and national piano competitions, Albert became the first pianist to win a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Vienna (with Roland Batik at the Vienna Conservatory) in nearly a decade.
A supervirtuoso... an excellent musician able to draw music out of Godowsky's 'lab experiments' on the Chopin Etudes. This pianist will go far.
In Vienna, he became assistant to the world-renowned pianist and musicologist duo Paul and Eva Badura-Skoda and has done additional studies with 19th-century performance specialist Sally Sargent and Carlo Grante. He is also a published scholar and has been invited to numerous universities as guest lecturer and recitalist. In addition to the Viennese classics and chamber music literature, his repertoire includes challenging works of neglected Romantic composers such as Alkan and Godowsky. Albert records for the Gramola label and is a Bösendorfer Artist.
Free downloads of Albert's performances are available by clicking the link!
This 2010 talk at TEDxPannonia, titled "Finding Our Hidden Dreams," offers further details on his path to musical self-discovery:
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