This album features a selection of six out of the twelve concertos arranged by Thomas Billington. They represent both the concerti written in the da chiesa (church) style and those belonging to the more secular da camera tradition. The recording was made using the harpsichord – an instrument often regarded as a predecessor of the piano. The rich variety of sonorities, intended to evoke the orchestral character of Corelli’s concerti, is achieved through changes in registers, articulation, flexibility in tempo choices, and, finally, through the realization of the harmony indicated by the figured bass. The year 1784 holds a special place in the history of London’s musical life. It was then that the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of George Frideric Handel was solemnly commemorated, almost exactly coinciding with the centenary of the composer’s birth. Owing to the immense popularity and esteem enjoyed by the German-born master among the British public, the anniversary celebrations took the form of a grand festival – the Handel Commemoration – which for many years set the direction of the English public’s musical interests. The concert programmes were filled largely with the repertoire known as ancient music meaning early music. This encompassed not only works by Renaissance masters such as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and Cipriano de Rore, but also compositions by Baroque composers. Among them, the music of Arcangelo Corelli held a particularly prominent position. His violin and trio sonatas, as well as the celebrated Concerti Grossi Op. 6, enjoyed great popularity and formed an essential part of the repertoire of English musicians, serving as a source of inspiration for subsequent generations of creators. One such figure was Thomas Billington (1754–1832?), an English composer, singer, instrumentalist, teacher, and musical entrepreneur active during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Still relatively little-known today, his output has only recently begun to attract greater scholarly and artistic attention. Billington showed a particular affinity for chamber and choral music, as well as for arrangements of works by other composers, especially Italian masters of the Baroque period. His catalogue includes arrangements of music by Arcangelo Corelli, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, and Luigi Boccherini. Vocal pedagogy, particularly concerning the choral singing, also occupied an important place in his activity, as evidenced by his didactic writings (treatises, method books, practical instructions) – including tips for beginner singers appended to his collection Te Deum, Jubilate, Magnificat & Nunc Dimittis, Op. 11, published in 1784. Billington’s most significant compositional achievement, however, is undoubtedly Corelli’s Celebrated Twelve Concertos, an arrangement of all twelve Concerti Grossi, Op. 6 by the Italian master. It is the only complete transcription of the entire cycle intended for one of three keyboard instruments: organ, harpsichord, or fortepiano. The freedom of choice of instrument was by no means an oversight on the publisher’s part; rather, it reflected common performance practice at the end of the eighteenth century. Both professional musicians and amateurs were accustomed to considerable flexibility in instrumentation, making use of whichever instruments happened to be available. Strictly fixed instrumentation is an artistic concept that emerged only in theoretical writings of the mid-nineteenth century. Corelli’s Celebrated Twelve Concertos represents an exceptionally faithful and meticulous translation of the original into the language of the keyboard. Billington treats the original with great respect, preserving the order of the concertos, the succession of movements, and their original key signatures. The transcription retains all the principal motifs and formal structures, whileadapting the rich orchestral texture to the capabilities of a single instrument. At the same time, the composer left performers a degree of interpretative freedom by including the figured bass line found in the original. The numerical figures placed above the bass part invite the performer to improvise harmonic realizations and enrich the texture with additional voices, thus enabling the shaping of sonority and expression according to individual sensibility and contemporary performance practice. The reduction in the number of voices and the simplification of texture in no way diminish the distinctive beauty of these works. Corelli’s melodies continue to captivate through their nobility and apparent simplicity, while their lucid formal architecture and transparent musical narrative are fully reflected in Billington’s arrangement. Interestingly, although the English composer published most of his works at his own expense, Corelli’s Celebrated Twelve Concertos saw numerous editions and reprints well into the first decades of the nineteenth century – a telling sign of the enduring appeal of this repertoire. Interpreted through the lens of Thomas Billington, Corelli’s music remains as vibrant and moving even today, two and a half centuries since this remarkable transcription first came into being.