Nothing comes up from nothing. In 1735 Bach wrote his Origin of the Musical Bach Family, one of the very few documents from his own pen including autobiographical information – he assigned himself number 24. Bach told us nothing else about his other musical influences, but we know something from other people, most conspicuously from his own son Carl Philipp Emanuel. In the Necrologue signed jointly by him and Johann Friedrich Agricola in 1754 we read: »Here [Arnstadt] he really showed the first fruits of his application to the art of organ playing and to composition, which he had learned chiefly by the observation of the works of the most famous and proficient composers of his day and by the fruits of his own reflection upon them. In the art of the organ he took the works of Bruhns, Reinken, Buxtehude, and several good French organists as models.« In a letter sent to Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Bach’s first biographer, in late 1774, Carl Philipp Emanuel wrote: » Besides Froberger, Kerl, and Pachelbel, he heard and studied the works of Frescobaldi, the Baden Capellmeister Fischer, Strunck, some old and good Frenchmen, Buxtehude, Reinken, Bruhns, and Lüneburg organist Böhm.« In his pioneering biography, further mentions to Nikolaus Bruhns are to be found, the first one in the summing-up of Bach’s life: »The most celebrated composers for the clavier in those days were Froberger, Fischer, Johann Casp. Kerl, Pachelbel, Buxtehude, Bruhns, Böhm, & c. He had observed that his brother had a book in which there were several pieces of the above-mentioned authors, and earnestly begged him to give it to him. […] For want of a candle, he could only copy it in moonlight nights; and it took six whole months before he could finish his laborious task.« We find the second one in the fifth chapter, one of the two devoted to the composer: »What he had written during the day, he learnt to play in the succeeding night. Yet with all the diligence that he bestowed on his own attempts, he never neglected at this time to study with the greatest attention the works of Frescobaldi, Froberger, Kerll, Pachelbel, Fischer, Strunck, Buxtehude, Reinken, Bruhns, Böhm, and some old French organists, who, according to the fashion of those times, were all great masters of harmony and of the fugue.« Lastly, Johann Joachim Quantz, in his well-known Method of Playing the Transverse Flute [1752], wrote: »The organists and clavier players - among the latter especially Froberger and Pachelbel, and among the former Reinken, Buxtehude, Bruhns and some others - were almost the first to contrive the most tasteful instrumental compositions of their period for their instruments. But particularly the art of organ playing, which had to a great extent been learned from the Netherlanders, was already at this time in a high state of advancement, thanks to the above-mentioned and some others able men. Finally the admirable Johann Sebastian Bach brought it to its greatest perfection in recent times«. Bruhns is a recurrent name when we search for Bach’s main musical influences. That book mentioned by Forkel is surely the so-called Andreas-Bach-Book, named after one of its former owners, but compiled by Bach’s eldest brother and his main keyboard teacher, Johann Christoph. Both are also connected to another early source, the Möller Manuscript, which contains early pieces by Bach together with music by Böhm, Buxtehude, Kuhnau, Pachelbel, Reinken and, last but not least, Nikolaus Bruhns, the only one who was already dead by the time of the compilation. His Praeludia in e Minor [the opening track of this disc] and G-Major are part of this book, and it is not difficult to find similarities and to build bridges between Bruhns’ and Bach’s early style [mind for instance the capricious countersubjects in the fugues and the overall free approach to the genre]. The names of Bach and Bruhns were to be joined again in the former’s later career, yet this time Bach would turn his attention to a work by Bruhns’ uncle, Friedrich Nicolaus [1637-1718], the eldest brother of his father Paul. On Good Friday 1726 Bach performed in Leipzig a Passion by him. Northern and Central Germany provided by that time a great deal of relevant musical families, and Bruhns belonged to one of the most distinguished. Paul the elder, Nikolaus’ grandfather, was active as a musician in Gottorp and Lübeck, and it was in the Hanseatic city where Bruhns studied with Dietrich Buxtehude, two of whose organ works can be also heard in this disc together with a Praeludium by the Celle-born organist and composer Arnold Matthias Brunckhorst. All the pieces are played by Lorenzo Ghielmi at the Ahrend Organ in San Simpliciano in Milan, which was built in 1991 following the North German style of the late 17th century. The fact that Bruhns’ works frequently appear hand in hand with those of the great, and long-lived, masters of his time is all the more remarkable because he lived only 31 years. Nevertheless his is undoubtedly one of the main threads of the fascinating and complex web of mutual musical influences of Northern German flourishing musical life in late 17th-century. Composer, organist, violinist and violist, Bruhns lived long enough to make a lasting impression in Husum, the city where he worked from 1689 till his death. In the words of one of his contemporaries, Johann Melchior Krafft: »Since never before nothing his like in composition and performance on all manner of instruments has been heard in this city.« — Luis Gago