What is the name of the person who asked the publisher Bessel to forward a copy to Balakirev?
Tchaikovsky finished his final revision of Romeo and Juliet in 1880, and felt it a courtesy to send a copy of the score to Balakirev. Balakirev, however, had dropped out of the music scene in the early 1870s and Tchaikovsky had lost touch with him. He asked the publisher Bessel to forward a copy to Balakirev. A year later Balakirev replied. In the same letter that he thanked Tchaikovsky profusely for the score, Balakirev suggested "the programme for a symphony which you would handle wonderfully well", a detailed plan for a symphony based on Lord Byron's Manfred. Originally drafted by Stasov in 1868 for Hector Berlioz as a sequel to that composer's Harold en Italie, the program had since been in Balakirev's care.
Tchaikovsky declined the project at first, saying the subject left him cold. Balakirev persisted. "You must, of course, make an effort", Balakirev exhorted, "take a more self-critical approach, don't hurry things". Tchaikovsky's mind was changed two years later, in the Swiss Alps, while tending to his friend Iosif Kotek and after he had re-read Manfred in the milieu in which the poem is set. Once he returned home, Tchaikovsky revised the draft Balakirev had made from Stasov's program and began sketching the first movement.The Manfred Symphony would cost Tchaikovsky more time, effort and soul-searching than anything else he would write, even the Pathetique Symphony. It also became the longest, most complex work he had written up to that point, and though it owes an obvious debt to Berlioz due to its program, Tchaikovsky was still able to make the theme of Manfred his own. Near the end of seven months of intensive effort, in late September 1885, he wrote Balakirev, "Never in my life, believe me, have I labored so long and hard, and felt so drained by my efforts. The Symphony is written in four movements, as per your program, although—forgive me—as much as I wanted to, I have not been able to keep all the keys and modulations you suggested ... It is of course dedicated to you".Once he had finished the symphony, Tchaikovsky was reluctant to further tolerate Balakirev's interference, and severed all contact; he told his publisher P. Jurgenson that he considered Balakirev a "madman". Tchaikovsky and Balakirev exchanged only a few formal, not overly friendly letters after this breach.
Tchaikovsky