Manfred is a "Symphony in Four Scenes" in B minor by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, his Opus 58, but unnumbered. It was written between May and September 1885 to a program based upon the eponymous 1817 poem by Byron, coming after the composer's Fourth Symphony and before his Fifth. Like the fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet, Tchaikovsky wrote Manfred at the behest of the nationalist composer Mily Balakirev, who provided him the program, which had a long history. Critic Vladimir Stasov had written it and sent it to Balakirev in 1868 hoping the latter would write such a symphony. But Balakirev had felt unable to carry out the project and instead had at first forwarded the program to French composer Hector Berlioz, whose programmatic works impressed him. Berlioz in turn had declined the project claiming old age and ill health and returned the program, after which it had remained with Balakirev until he reestablished contact with Tchaikovsky in the early 1880s. Manfred is the only programmatic symphonic work by Tchaikovsky in more than one movement and is in fact larger than any of his numbered symphonies both in length and instrumentation. He initially considered the work one of his best, and in a typical reversal of opinion later considered destroying all but the opening movement. The symphony was greeted with mixed reviews, some finding much to laud in it, and others feeling that its programmatic aspects only weakened it. Manfred remained rarely performed for many years, due to its length and complexity. It has been recorded with increasing frequency but is still seldom heard in the concert hall. History In the first ten years after graduating from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1865 Tchaikovsky completed three symphonies. After that he started five more symphony projects, four of which led to a completed symphony premiered during the composer's lifetime. During his second and final trip to Russia in the winter of 1867–68, the French composer Hector Berlioz conducted his program symphony Harold en Italie. The work caused considerable stir. Its subject was very much to the tastes of its audiences, whose enthusiasm for the works of Lord Byron had not exhausted itself as it had begun to do in Europe. Berlioz's use of a four-movement structure for writing program music intrigued many Russian musicians. One immediate consequence was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's four movement suite Antar, written in 1868. Around the same time as Rimsky-Korsakov