Lovers of obscure but worthwhile Baroque music roll up! That is, unless you bought this disc when it first came out on the K617 label 25 years ago. Gramophone didn’t review it that time round, so it’s good to get this chance to welcome it back. Born in Pressburg (today’s Bratislava) in 1660, Johann Sigismund Kusser moved with his family to Stuttgart in his teens, and may have spent some time in Paris (there’s no actual proof) before working in Brunswick, Hamburg, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Stuttgart again and finally Dublin, where he died in 1721. The Paris connection is important, as is the number of places he worked, for by far the majority of references to Kusser in the history books have him as one of the first German composers to write suites in the French style (or, as they are also called, ‘ouverture-suites’). Even if he had only claimed to have worked with Lully in Paris, one can well imagine that he was considered a useful expert in the growing number of German courts that were desperate to acquire the fashionable French manner. And although it is Muffat who is usually associated with importing the French style into German-speaking lands, the 1682 publication from which Kusser’s suites ‘suivant la méthode françoise’ come precedes Muffat’s Florilegium collection by 13 years.

Here, then, are six suites, each with an overture and around eight to ten movements, and sounding as French as French can be. The dances range from the courantes, sarabandes, gavottes, bourrées, chaconnes, menuets and gigues you might expect to some older styles such as the branle and galliard, and are delightful. The performances, by a partnership of Musica Aeterna Bratislava from Slovakia and Les Menus Plaisirs from France, are elegant and stylish, and they know how to dance. If they do not pound with the energy that Baroque orchestras like to today, they are none the worse for it. Thanks, Christophorus, for rescuing them.