Tomoki Sakata

Tomoki Sakata won First Prize along with six special prizes in the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition 2016. He won Fourth Place in the Queen Elisabeth Competition 2021. He has been praised in many competitions including the 14th Cliburn Competition where he was the youngest prize winner at the age of 19. He has performed in more than 20 countries around the world, as well as in Japan, and in numerous international music festivals. At the Kremlin International Music Festival, his recital featuring an all-Liszt program was highly praised by Nikolai Petrov, who called Sakata’s performance “the world’s best Liszt.”
In 2022, Sakata made his conducting debut, conducting and playing the piano concerto with the Kanagawa Philharmonic Orchestra, and conducting the Japanese premiere of Liszt’s orchestral works.
He is also actively working as a composer. Sakata released his piano arrangement collection Vocalise, and After a Dream, and published his composition Sonatine for Alto Saxophone and Piano from Ongaku-no-tomo-sha.
Sakata made his CD debut in 2015. In March 2020, he released an ambitious album of arrangements that included world-premiere recordings. Sakata is the winner of the 32nd Idemitsu Music Award, the 72nd Future Prize of the Kanagawa Culture Awards and the 27th Hotel Akura Music Award.