SAKAMOTO Andata / Georgijs Osokins | Deutsche Grammophon

Pianist Georgijs Osokins’s new single features a performance of Sakamoto’s Andata – a work of profound stillness drawn from the composer’s late creative period. Originally the opening track of Sakamoto’s album async, Andata unfolds with characteristic restraint: sparse textures, suspended harmonies and a sense of time that seems to hover between presence and disappearance. The title suggests motion – yet here it becomes an inward journey, shaped by fragility and quiet transformation.

For Osokins, Sakamoto’s music represents a continuation of the same essential questions that also resonate in the works of Pärt and Vasks – though expressed through a distinctly different cultural lens: “Sakamoto’s path has always been surrounded by a certain mystique. Toward the ending phases of his life, his remarkable music seemed imbued with a search, one already beyond any clear boundary. What kind of music do you write when you can feel the breath of death? What do you place into each note, or rather, behind each note? What is sound? What is the meaning of harmony within a life so fragile? Sakamoto answers these questions with a beauty that resists definition. 

I was struck by the album async, by its multidimensionality, its austerity, and its conceptual rigour. That is why, as a homage to the great Japanese artist, I chose to record Andata, the opening track of the album. This recording is also a quiet dedication to Japan, to its singular spirit, and to the way life and nature breathe as one,” says the pianist.