We think of Romeo and Juliet as being quintessentially Tchaikovsky at his best, white-hot with inspiration, and indeed it is one of his most exciting and successful works. What is astonishing is how much it owes to the specific instructions of his admirer, Balakirev. Shortly after the first performance of his Symphony No.1 in Moscow in 1868, Tchaikovsky, still only 28 and virtually unknown, visited St Petersburg and for the first time met the immensely influential Balakirev, head of the “Mighty Handful” group of nationalist composers that included Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov. Out for a walk together in May 1869, Balakirev suggested – to us today, such bold presumption, yet also prescience, seems quite extraordinary – the composition of an overture based on Romeo and Juliet, and Tchaikovsky responded to the proposal with enthusiasm. Balakirev laid down the entire road map for the work, even as far as characters, keys and tempi: it was to begin with a religioso introduction portraying Friar Laurence, followed by a sonata-form Allegro in B minor illustrating the two feuding families and a love theme in D flat (these two were Balakirev's favourite keys); these would be developed, and the piece end with the death of the lovers. Tchaikovsky meekly followed the older master's demands, went away, and wrote what is unquestionably his first masterpiece, exceeding in quality anything ever written by Balakirev. However, the process by which he arrived at the piece we now know and love was far from effortless. In its original version it was completed in November 1869 and first performed in March 1870 under Nikolai Rubinstein, but it was a failure, and he set about a drastic revision, accepting Balakirev's criticism that the entire opening section had to be rewritten. A second version was performed in 1872 under Nápravník, but as so often Tchaikovsky was still not satisfied, and only after his final revisions in 1880 – by which time he had of course written the Fourth Symphony – was the piece ready for publication in 1881. Surprisingly, however, its first performance did not take place until April 1886, in Tbilisi under Ippolitov-Ivanov.