The Double Concerto in A minor (Op. 102) by Johannes Brahms is a concerto for violin, cello and orchestra.
Composed in the summer of 1887, and first performed on 18 October of that year, it was Brahms' final work for orchestra. Brahms, approaching the project with anxiety over writing for instruments that were not his own, wrote it for the cellist Robert Hausmann and his old estranged friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. The concerto was, in par...
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The Double Concerto in A minor (Op. 102) by Johannes Brahms is a concerto for violin, cello and orchestra.
Composed in the summer of 1887, and first performed on 18 October of that year, it was Brahms' final work for orchestra. Brahms, approaching the project with anxiety over writing for instruments that were not his own, wrote it for the cellist Robert Hausmann and his old estranged friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim. The concerto was, in part, a gesture of reconciliation towards Joachim, after their long friendship had ruptured following Joachim's divorce from his wife Amalie. Brahms had sided with Amalie in the dispute, and this led to the estrangement between Brahms and Joachim. The Double Concerto acted as a form of musical reconciliation. The concerto also makes use of the musical motif A-E-F, a permutation of F-A-E, which stood for a personal motto of Joachim, frei aber einsam ("free but lonely").
The composition consists of three movements in the fast-slow-fast pattern...
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