Anna Picard [The Independent, 15 February 2009]
It takes a major anniversary to justify a performance of The Return of Tobias. Critically acclaimed at its 1775 premiere, Haydn’s Italian oratorio gives little hint of the meteorological and zoological detail he would later lavish on The Creation and The Seasons. Save for a smattering of Sturm und Drang in the overture, and a sequence of searing dissonances asTobias’s blind father, Tobit, recoils from the sun, this is a domestic oratorio: a simple story of a loving, gentle family, written by an unhappily married, childless composer.