Suites, fugues, toccatas and variations by a well-travelled contemporary of JS Bach, in a new recording by an Italian harpsichordist with an impressive catalogue of Baroque rarities on Brilliant Classics.

The music of Conrad Friedrich Hurlebusch (1691-1765) has featured on a few enterprising collections of Baroque-era rarities, but this is the first-ever album to be entirely dedicated to the art of a composer whose style successfully mirrors his cosmopolitan outlook. Having received initial tuition from both his father Heinrich – another organist/composer – and from a pupil of Buxtehude, Hurlebusch left his birthplace of Braunschweig and embarked on a journey around Europe that, for the first half of his career, took him to Hambiurg, Tuscany, Venice, Stockholm and many points in between. On a stay in Leipzig, he met Bach and his sons; CPE mentioned Hurlebusch in dispatches as an excellent keyboard virtuoso.

Finally, in 1742, Hurlebusch settled in Amsterdam, as organist of the famous Oude Kerk. On his travels, Hurlebusch had become familiar with diverse Italian styles such as the work of Corelli and Vivaldi, but he also remained open to more recent developments such as the galant style of the 1730s and 1740s. Published in Hamburg in around 1735, the volume of harpsichord music recorded here by Fernando de Luca is an expanded reprint of a collection published two years earlier as the composer’s Op.1. It has never been recorded complete, but it discloses a wealth of invention in an outward-looking, extrovert style which must have suited Hurlebusch’s gifts as a performer: this is music designed to make an impression.

The volume opens with an extensive set of variations on a minuet. There are five suites of dances – allemandes, courantes, sarabandes, minuets and gigues, such as we find in Bach’s solo-instrumental suites – and several freestanding fugues and toccatas.

Fernando De Luca has recorded extensively for Brilliant Classics, including recent volumes dedicated to Jean-Jacques Beauvarlet-Charpentier (96774), Pierre-Thomas Dufour (96771) and Pierre-Claude Foucquet (96772).