Biography | Ludwig van Beethoven — The Four-Hour Academy in This House

People treat the Fifth Symphony as a recording that was always finished. The first public hearing was this cold night. The Theater an der Wien opened on 13 June 1801 at Linke Wienzeile 6. Emanuel Schikaneder built it. Beethoven lived in rooms inside the house in 1803 and 1804 while he worked on Leonore, later Fidelio. On 22 December 1808 he hired the theatre for his own benefit. The Wiener Zeitung advertised a musical Akademie. The programme started at half past six and ran about four hours. The first half opened with the Sixth Symphony. It closed with the Fourth Piano Concerto, Beethoven at the keyboard. After the interval came the Fifth Symphony, then parts of the Mass in C, an improvised piano fantasia, and the Choral Fantasy. The hall was underheated. The orchestra had one rehearsal. In the Choral Fantasy a mistake forced a restart. Contemporary notices were thin. The works themselves outlived the night. A plaque on the outer wall records the residence and the first performances of Fidelio, the Third Symphony, and the Kreutzer Sonata in this house. The Fifth and Sixth belong to the same stage. The building is still an opera house. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Theater an der Wien