Nigel Kennedy on his Classic FM fight: ‘Hendrix is like Beethoven, Vivaldi is more Des O’Connor’

Fresh from a bust-up with ‘Jurassic FM’ over playing Hendrix, the violinist talks about musical snobbery, going on strike and his lifelong regret at turning Duke Ellington down

Opera librettist Amanda Holden obituary

Scholar of opera who translated librettos into English, wrote ones of her own and edited guides to encourage new listeners

From Ghetts to Genesis, Nick Cave to Arlo Parks: autumn 2021’s essential music

From Fontaines DC to the Valkyrie, a techno Halloween to Little Simz, this is the unmissable music of the next few months

Was the fiddler framed? How Nero may have been a good guy after all

He was a demonic emperor who stabbed citizens at random and let Rome burn. Or was he? We go behind the scenes at a new show exploding myths about the ancient world’s favourite baddie

‘We won’t be bouncing back’ – the unsettling truth about the big reopening

Next week, after 14 months of closure and despair, the arts are reawakening. But the damage caused by Covid runs deep – and recovery is by no means assured

The Life of Music review – pushing at the boundaries of the classical canon

Nicholas Kenyon’s wide-ranging survey of the development of western music is packed with his passion for the subject

Anthony Payne obituary

Composer celebrated for completing Elgar’s Third Symphony but whose own voice was more modernist in style

Elaine Hugh-Jones obituary

Composer whose settings of texts in English display dramatic flair, poetic awareness and assured piano writing

On my radar: Brett Anderson’s cultural highlights

The Suede frontman on his latest musical discoveries, the brilliance of Michael Clark and the enduring appeal of mudlarking by the Thames

Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: ‘No memorial can come anywhere near what happened’

The cellist believes that plans for a UK Holocaust memorial are ‘counter-productive’. What matters most, she argues, is education

Don’t go breaking my art: it’s time to axe the mood-ruining, bar-scrambling interval

Covid has forced pianist Stephen Hough to play at different times – without a break. And he’s loved it so much, he doesn’t want to ever go back

‘She made music jump into 3D’: Wendy Carlos, the reclusive synth genius

She went platinum by plugging Bach into 20th century machines, and was soon working with Stanley Kubrick. But prejudice around her gender transition pushed Wendy Carlos out of sight

Ornella Volta obituary

Other lives:

A Sound Mind by Paul Morley review – a musical odyssey

Morley’s typically digressive attempt to demystify classical music is exhausting but illuminating

House of Music by Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason review – memoir of an extraordinary family

What’s the secret behind raising seven classical music prodigies? A mother’s account