Three notices from the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung.

As quoted by Robin Wallace on the AMS-L mailing list.

7 (13 February 1805), 321-22

This long composition, exceedingly difficult to perform, is actually a very broadly expanded, bold, and even wild fantasia. It is not at all lacking in startling and beautiful passages in which the energetic and talented spirit of its creator must be reecognized; however, very often it seems to lose itself in irregularity...The reviewer certainly belongs to Mr. v. Beethoven's most sincere admirers. however, in this work he must confess to finding much too much that is strident and bizarre, so that an overview of the whole is obscured and the unity almost completely lost.

7 (1 May 1805), 501-02

To be sure, this new work of B. has great and daring ideas, and, as one can expect from the genius of this comoposer, great power in the way it is worked out; but the symphony would improve immeasurably (it lasts an entire hour) if B. could bring himself to shorten it, and to bring more light, clarity, and unity into the whole. These are qualities that in Mozart's symphonies in G minor and C major, Beethoven's in C and D, and Eberl's in E-flat and D, with all their wealth of ideas, all their interweaving of the instruments, and all their interchange of surprising modulations, are never lost at any point..

9 (28 January 1807), 285-86

The finale has much value, which I am far from denying it; however, it cannot very well escape from the charge of great bizzarrerie. At the very least, for example, no composer before Beethoven has dared to begin a piece in E-flat major in such a way that the instruments begin al unisono on the leading tone, and then continue with progressions that belong to the scale of G minor, until finally the fourth and following measures are merciful enough to extricate our ear from this predicament and remove us to the actual key!

The first two quotes are from the Viennese correspondent; the third is from the one in Mannheim. For the full text of these reviews and their context, plus many others, see Senner, Wallace and Meredith, The Critical Reception of Beethoven's Compositions by His German Contemporaries (Lincoln: U. of Nebraska Press, 1999- ).