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 (Beethoven) at a concert in the Redoutensaal, Vienna, at which the Seventh Symphony (which had been premiered two months earlier) was also played. Beethoven was growing increasingly deaf at the time, but nevertheless led the premiere. Reportedly, "the orchestra largely ignored his ungainly gestures and followed the principal violinist instead." When asked by his pupil Carl Czerny why the Eighth was less popular than the Seventh, Beethoven is said to have replied, "because the Eighth is so much better." A critic wrote that "the applause it received was not accompanied by that enthusiasm which distinguishes a work which gives universal delight;