Ferdinand

It is usually the big nineteenth-century opera sets that are bought for their singers; but with a line-up of principals such as we have here Handel too is swept into the golden net. Lucia Popp, two years into her career after her Vienna debut, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich, Walter Berry: that is a quartet which in its time may have seemed no more than standard stuff, but at this date looks starry indeed. […] The Orfeo, for one thing, is sung in German instead of Italian; it has cuts, though many fewer than the Mackerras recording in English with Dame Janet Baker; it has the solo voices recorded very close indeed (those that are supposedly off-stage are just about where many modern recordings would have them except when off-stage); and the orchestra sounds, to our re-trained ears, big and thick, with the heavy bass-line that used to seem as proper to Handel as gravy from the roast was to Yorkshire pudding. The roles of Caesar and Sextus, moreover, are taken by men, and there is not a countertenor in sight.

Hits To The Head is a 20-track greatest hits collection spanning the almost 20 year existence of Franz Ferdinand. Alongside 18 classics the album features two brand-new tracks “Billy Goodbye” and “Curious” co-produced by Alex Kapranos, Julian Corrie and Stuart Price.

Johann Caspar [Kaspar] Ferdinand Fischer was a German (Bohemian) Baroque composer and Kapellmeister. Johann Nikolaus Forkel ranked Fischer as one of the best composers for keyboard of his day, however, partly due to the rarity of surviving copies of his music, his music is rarely heard today. There can be no doubt that J.C.F. Fischer belongs to the ranks of the important and influential keyboard composers of the 17th/early 18th centuries.