The Symphony No. 49 by Franz Joseph Haydn, written in 1768, bears the subtitle "The Passion". Some read in this denomination a simple reference to the particularly stormy and impetuous charge of the symphony: "passion" therefore understood in an emotional and affective sense, as something that disturbs and moves the soul.
Tradition, however, refers this title to its religious meaning, assuming that the symphony was completed or performed during the celebrations of Holy Week: this particular ambiguity of interpretation is perhaps what Haydn himself wanted, with regard to an absolutely peculiar symphony, with the its four movements arranged according to the slow-fast alternation (perhaps to imitate the forms of sacred music) and all in the same key, F minor, substantially unused by all his contemporaries due to its particular gloom and darkness.
The Resurrection of Christ by Jacopo Tomadini from Cividale, from 1863, is a cantata for choir, soloists and orchestra, on a paraphrase of the sequence Victimae Paschali . A full-bodied and interesting work, it was even appreciated by Franz Liszt, who often met Tomadini in Rome and remained in correspondence with him for several years. Anticipating what a few years later would take the name of "Cecilian movement", Tomadini chooses to renounce, in sacred music, the operatic taste that dominated Italian productions, opting for a less exaggerated and manifest expressiveness: it is no coincidence that contemporaries see in Resurrectionof kinship with Haydn's oratorios, particularly in the well-finished instrumental parts and in the classical taste which always elegantly tries to avoid easy exaggerations.
After the first performance, which took place in Florence in 1864, the work underwent very few subsequent revivals. What we are presenting is the first performance since 1977, the year in which the Resurrection was performed at the Alla Scala theater in a fundraising evening for the Friuli earthquake. Tonight's performance was also the occasion to produce the first modern edition (and first ever critical edition) of the work, now available to the public after long years of oblivion.
