Symphony No. 8 (Schubert) by default incomplete), and the even more undeniable fact that Schubert had begun a third movement in B minor (leaving precisely 30 bars of fully orchestrated scherzo and 112 succeeding bars in short score), stands against the view that the two completed movements can legitimately stand alone. Reviewing the premiere of the symphony in 1865, the music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote: He ended by stressing that the symphony is among Schubert's most beautiful instrumental works. In 1927–28, Felix Weingartner—better known as a classical conductor and the first to record all nine Beethoven symphonies and the second, after Stokowski, to record
Symphony No. 8 (Schubert) (like the first movement) is in sonata form (as are all Schubert's symphonic finales) and in a very similar style and mood. If the "entr'acte" indeed started life as the finale of this symphony, then Schubert evidently recycled it (probably at that stage unorchestrated) from the symphony to the incidental music, presumably orchestrating it for the play and perhaps making compositional changes. British pianist and Schubert specialist Anthony Goldstone prepared a new 4-movement performing edition of the Symphony for piano duet, using the transcription of the first two movements prepared by Huttenbrenner, his own completion of Schubert's Scherzo, and the