quality of his work at this time; a widely held view has been that his music showed signs of mental breakdown and creative decay. More recently, critics have suggested that the changes in style may be explained by "lucid experimentation". In 1850, Schumann succeeded Ferdinand Hiller as musical director at Düsseldorf, but he was a poor conductor and quickly aroused the opposition of the musicians. According to Harold C. Schonberg, in his 1967 The Great Conductors: "The great composer was impossible on the platform ... There is something heartrending about poor Schumann's epochal inefficiency as a conductor." His contract was eventually terminated. By the end of that year he completed his Symphony No. 3, "Rhenish" (a work containing five movements and whose fourth movement is apparently intended to represent an episcopal coronation ceremony). In 1851 he revised what would be published as his fourth symphony. From 1851 to 1853 he visited Switzerland, Belgium and Leipzig. On 30 September 1853, the 20-year-old composer Johannes Brahms arrived unannounced at the door of the Schumanns carrying a letter of introduction from violinist Joseph Joachim. (Schumann was not at home, and would not meet Brahms until the next day.) Brahms amazed Clara and Robert with his music, stayed with them for several weeks, and became a close family friend. (He later worked closely with Clara to popularize Schumann's compositions during her long widowhood.) During this time Schumann, Brahms and Schumann's pupil Albert Dietrich collaborated on the composition of the F-A-E Sonata for Joachim; Schumann also published an article, "Neue Bahnen" ("New Paths") in the Neue Zeitschrift (his first article in many years), hailing the unknown young Brahms from Hamburg, a man who had published nothing, as "the Chosen One" who "was destined to give ideal expression to the times." It was an extraordinary way to present Brahms to the musical world, setting up great expectations that he did not fulfill for many years. In January 1854, Schumann went to Hanover, where he heard a performance of his Paradise and the Peri organized by Joachim and Brahms. Two years later at Schumann's request, the work received its first English performance conducted by William Sterndale Bennett. Schumann returned to Düsseldorf and began to edit his complete works and make an anthology on the subject of music. He had a renewal of the symptoms that had threatened him earlier. Besides the single note sounding in his ear