Sarah Nemtanu’s musical journey began in Bordeaux, her hometown, where she studied violin with her father, Vladimir, the concertmaster of the Bordeaux-Aquitaine National Orchestra. At age 16, she joined Gérard Poulet’s class at the Paris Conservatory. During her studies, she developed a passion for chamber music and orchestral performance. A student of Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Jean Mouillère, and Alain Meunier, she was unanimously awarded first prizes in violin and chamber music. Following her successes in international competitions (first prize at the Maurice Ravel Competition in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in 1998, third prize at the Stradivarius Competition in 2001), and her breakthrough with the general public in December 2000 at the Cité de la Musique, performing Brahms’s Double Concerto with Gautier Capuçon alongside the Paris Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Emmanuel Krivine, she was appointed concertmaster of the Orchestre national de France at the age of 21. She won a Victoire de la Musique award in 2007 (“Best New Instrumental Soloist”) and served as the stand-in for Mélanie Laurent on violin in Radu Mihaileanu’s film *Le Concert* (2009). While she enjoys exploring the Balkan repertoire, as on her album *Gypsic* (2010), she also excels as a soloist in classical concertos, premieres (Bechara el-Khoury, Dimitri Tchesnokov), and chamber music performances with pianists Romain Descharmes, Jean-Frédéric Neuburger, and Éric Lesage; violist Lise Berthaud; her sister Deborah; and trumpeter and horn player David Guerrier…

As her love of music is inextricably linked to passing on her knowledge and sharing her talent, she enjoys performing in support of worthy causes or helping to provide musical education to young children and students, whether through masterclasses, music academies or courses. She has been teaching the violin at the Paris Conservatoire since 2022.

Since January 2026, Sarah Nemtanu has held the post of concertmaster of the Orchestre de Paris, having previously been regularly invited to perform as a soloist alongside the orchestra conducted by Klaus Mäkelä or Esa-Pekka Salonen. The post had been vacant since Roland Daugareil’s retirement in 2021 and the untimely death of Philippe Aïche in 2022.