Aleksandr Pavlovich Nemtin

Aleksandr Pavlovich Nemtin (Perm, 1936 – Moscow, 1999) was a Russian composer whose work revolves around the figure of Aleksandr Scriabin, to whom he devoted much of his creative life. His name is associated with the reconstruction of Scriabin's unfinished projects in the Soviet Union of the second half of the twentieth century.

Nemtin graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1960, where he studied composition with Chulaki. From 1965 he divided his time between mathematical research in number theory and composition. His output is chiefly instrumental, and his Symphony No. 2 "War and Peace", for organ and orchestra in a single movement, occupies a central place in his development.

For more than twenty years he worked on the reconstruction of Scriabin's planned Mystery. Drawing on an existing poetic text, brief musical sketches and fragments of Scriabin's Opp. 66, 68, 73 and 74, he produced the monumental Predvaritel'noye deystvo ("Preliminary Action"), written for organ, piano, soprano, mixed choir and lighting. It consists of three linked symphonies: Vselennaya ("Universe"), Chelovechestvo ("Humanity") and Preobrazheniye ("Transfiguration"). The three parts were premiered separately: the first under Kondrashin (Moscow, 1973), the second under Aleksandr Dmitriyev (St Petersburg, 1996) and the third under Ashkenazy (Berlin, 1996).

Nemtin also wrote an operatic scene based on Scriabin's sketches for Keistut i Birute, and a ballet, Nyuansï ("Nuances"), drawn from Scriabin's last piano pieces; both works were completed in 1974. His treatise on orchestration is considered revealing and has been well received for its use in teaching.

His legacy lies in the reinterpretation of the harmonic and orchestral style of the late Scriabin, in a body of work that takes up the artistic and philosophical concerns of the early twentieth century from the perspective of the turn of the millennium.