… for I am never in the present. We always meet each other, ourselves while absent. If you speak of yourself, you speak of someone who is absent. Never will you be able to give him all the reality you want to give him. And the same is true of words: they always struggle with the absence of the word, with that which they cannot say. It is absence that renders words audible and visible, the large white interstices of silence between words without which words would be invisible.
Edmond Jabès, in: The Writing of the Desert
(translated by C. A. Wollin)
BIOGRAPHY
Sarah Nemtsov (née Reuter) was born in Oldenburg in 1980. Her mother was the painter Elisabeth Naomi Reuter. She began composing at the age of eight. From 1989 to 1993, she performed as a recorder player in numerous concerts and recordings with the REIL Trio. At the age of fourteen, she began playing the oboe.
From 1998 to 2000, Sarah Nemtsov studied composition as a young student at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover with Nigel Osborne, before continuing her composition studies with Johannes Schöllhorn. At the same time, she studied oboe with Klaus Becker and, from 2003, with Burkhard Glaetzner in Berlin. After completing her diploma in both subjects in 2005, she became a master student in composition with Walter Zimmermann at the Universität der Künste Berlin, graduating with distinction. Since 2007, she has devoted herself exclusively to composition. In 2014, she was a guest lecturer in composition, specialising in music theatre, at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln; in 2018, she taught at the University of Haifa as part of a DAAD lectureship. Sarah Nemtsov is a member of the Akademie der Künste Berlin. Since 2022, she has been Professor of Composition at Mozarteum University Salzburg.
COMPOSITIONAL WORK
“Wildly proliferating inspiration” – this is how Deutschlandfunk described Sarah Nemtsov’s way of working. Her catalogue comprises more than 150 compositions and encompasses almost every genre, from solo works, chamber music and orchestral works to opera, electronic music and multimedia works. Her works have been published by Ricordi since 2016.
In her distinctive musical language, she brings together a wide range of influences, from Renaissance and Baroque music to jazz, rock and electronic music. The intensity of her music also emerges from her engagement with extra-musical subjects. These include political and social questions as well as interpersonal constellations. Her engagement with other art forms, and literature in particular, plays an important role. In her compositions, Sarah Nemtsov draws on texts by Walter Benjamin, Paul Celan, Edmond Jabès, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, E. E. Cummings, W. G. Sebald, or Olga Tokarczuk, which inspire her music on conceptual, sensual and thematic levels. She is particularly interested in transitions and in-between spaces – between sound and noise, instrument and electronics, concert and music theatre, construction and chaos.
Her more recent works explore forms of ambiguity, complexity and the simultaneity of contradictory states. An important body of work explores compositions engaging with concepts of Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah), including the tetralogy “TZIMTZUM” and the meta-cycle “SEPHIROT”.
PRIZES AND AWARDS
Sarah Nemtsov has received numerous prizes and grants, including the 2012 German Music Authors’ Prize of GEMA (in the category of emerging talent) and the 2013 Busoni Composition Prize of the Akademie der Künste Berlin. In 2016, she won the international RicordiLAB Composition Competition; in 2018, she received the Oldenburg Composition Prize for Contemporary Music. In 2020, she was nominated for the Opus Klassik award as “Composer of the Year”. In 2021, she became a member of the Saxon Academy of Arts and of the Akademie der Künste Berlin, Section Music. In 2025, she was awarded the prestigious Heidelberger Künstlerinnenpreis.
FESTIVALS, ENSEMBLES & PERFORMERS
Sarah Nemtsov regularly works with ensembles and orchestras including the WDR Symphony Orchestra, hr-Sinfonieorchester, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Klangforum Wien, ensemble mosaik, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Contrechamps, Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Arditti Quartet, Diotima Quartet, Trio Boulanger, and many more. She has a particularly close, long-standing and intensive collaboration with Ensemble Adapter and Ensemble Nikel.
Her music has been performed by conductors including Joana Mallwitz, Elena Schwarz, Jonathan Stockhammer, Peter Rundel, Titus Engel, Baldur Brönnimann, Michael Wendeberg, Bas Wiegers, Johannes Kalitzke and Ilan Volkov. Nemtsov’s works have been performed at international festivals and concert series including the Donaueschinger Musiktage, Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Münchener Biennale, Musica Strasbourg, ECLAT, Ultraschall Berlin, MaerzMusik, Holland Festival, Bregenzer Festspiele, Wien Modern, Klangspuren Schwaz, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and the ISCM World New Music Festival. In 2022, two portrait festivals were dedicated to her work: Les Amplitudes in Switzerland and w e i t – Weingarten in southern Germany. In the 2022/23 season, she was Composer in Focus at the Saarländisches Staatstheater; in 2026/27, she is Composer in Residence at Theater Magdeburg.
Her 70-minute tetralogy “TZIMTZUM” (2020–2023) for soloists and orchestra was premiered in November 2023 at the Essen NOW! festival with the WDR Symphony Orchestra and Ensemble Nikel conducted by Peter Rundel. Her latest orchestral work, “Antlitz”, will be premiered in January 2027 by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Kirill Petrenko.
STAGE WORKS
Music theatre occupies a central place in Sarah Nemtsov’s work. Her chamber opera “Herzland” was premiered in Hanover in 2006. The full-length opera “L’ABSENCE” (2006–2008), based on Edmond Jabès’ The Book of Questions, followed in 2012 at the Münchener Biennale. “SACRIFICE” (2016), with a libretto by Dirk Laucke, was premiered at Theater Halle in 2017 – “Sound becomes space becomes time becomes reality”, wrote DIE ZEIT, while Die Deutsche Bühne described it as “a music theatre experience of the highest calibre”. In 2022, her staged cycle “HAUS” was presented at the Ruhrtriennale in the Turbinenhalle Dortmund – “A sonic maelstrom released from its chains, opening up spaces for association” (nmz). Her opera “OPHELIA” (2020–2022), with a libretto by Mirko Bonné, premiered at the Saarländisches Staatstheater in May 2023 – “a shattering, idea-rich and allusion-rich music theatre of total transgression” (Opernwelt).
Her opera “WE”, based on the dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin, was premiered at Oper Dortmund in May 2026. Eva-Maria Höckmayr also directed this production. “This music is so finely nuanced and multi-layered in sound that one never tires
of listening.” (nmz)
RECORDINGS
In 2012, the portrait album “A LONG WAY AWAY. Passagen / Hoqueti” was released as part of the Edition Zeitgenössische Musik series of the Deutscher Musikrat. In 2018, the portrait album “amplified imagination”, featuring Ensemble Adapter, the Sonar Quartet and ensemble mosaik, was released by Wergo. In 2024, the album “TZIMTZUM” was released by bastille musique (Ensemble Nikel and WDR Symphony Orchestra) and received the Clef d’Or from ResMusica. Recordings of her works have also been released by Rondeau, Hänssler Classic and Genuin. Recent releases include recordings of the song cycle “heimwehgefiedert” (2022), “Wolves” (2023), “IRA” (2025) and “Theo/Ahva” (2026). Further CDs are in
preparation.
PROJECTS
Sarah Nemtsov lives with her family in Berlin. Together with her husband, Jascha Nemtsov, she opened the “Raum für Kunst und Diskurs” in May 2015 – a space for various events, concerts and discussions, as well as exhibitions of the work and archive of the painter Elisabeth Naomi Reuter, whose estate she has managed since 2017. Nemtsov was also involved in the publication of the art book “Elisabeth Naomi Reuter: Im Mittelpunkt der Mensch. Ölgemälde und Zeichnungen” (Hentrich&Hentrich, 2015), as well as the bilingual, expanded new edition of Reuter’s picture book “Judith und Lisa/Best friends” (Hentrich&Hentrich, 2024), first published in 1988 as one of the earliest (German) picture books addressing the Holocaust.
As artistic director and composer, she initiated the project “MEKOMOT” (2015–2016), a concert tour featuring contemporary compositions and traditional Jewish songs in former synagogues in Germany and Poland.
Together with Ensemble Adapter and the author Finn-Ole Heinrich, she also developed the live music audiobook “Helm auf” (2015) for audiences aged 10 and above.
Sarah Nemtsov regularly serves as a jury member for composition competitions and funding programmes and is also active as an advisor and curator in various contexts.
DOWNLOAD: Biography Sarah Nemtsov (English)
DOWNLOAD: Biographie Sarah Nemtsov (deutsch)
OBOE
As an oboist, Sarah Nemtsov won first prizes at various national competitions, including the German national “Jugend musiziert” competition in 1999 (1st prize, wind quintet) and 2000 (1st prize, solo oboe). In 2000, she also received a special prize from the Hannoverscher Künstlerverein. At the 2007 Hanns Eisler Prize for Composition and Performance of Contemporary Music, she received a special prize as an oboist for her interpretation of one of her own works. Sarah Nemtsov performed in Germany and abroad as a solo oboist and as a member of various chamber ensembles, including in a duo with her husband, pianist Jascha Nemtsov. Since 2007, she has devoted herself exclusively to composition.
Sarah at a concert 1989: Reil Trio, Ilse Reil and Sarah (Reuter/Nemtsov), recorder, Hermann Dick, harpsichord
Paintings on this website
With kindly permission by artist Elisabeth Naomi Reuter (1943-2017) several of her paintings were used for this website.