Hot Water Music - Keep It Together

In 1826, the Ninth Symphony was played in Leipzig (March 6) and in Berlin (November 27). The Berlin performance was conducted by Karl Moser (1774–1851), and this time the review of the reviewer of the Universal Musical Newspaper was negative. The symphony seemed too long and heterogeneous for the criticism, and the finale evoked associations with the Sabbath of hellish forces: “It seems as if the spirits of the underworld made a feast of abuse of everything that is considered to be joy among people. With tremendous power, a terrible horde comes, breaking human hearts to smithereens and violently destroying the “spark of God” with its wild howls and monstrous mockery. The maestro remained himself - a spellcaster, who this time chose to demand from us something superhuman. I don’t agree to that. ”Some authoritative musicians also criticized the Ninth Symphony. For example, Ludwig Spur considered her finale “monstrous, tasteless and vulgar in the interpretation of Schiller’s ode” (though this proposition was published in the publication of Spur’s memoirs many years after Beethoven’s death in 1860).