In 1881 the violinist Joseph Joachim, one of the composer's oldest and closest friends, went through a bitter divorce, accusing his wife Amalie of infidelity. Brahms defended Amalie in their circle of mutual friends, even writing a letter in her defence which was read out in court. Joachim was furious and immediately broke off their decades-long friendship; the two were not to speak to one another for a further six years.

The Double Concerto was written after this estrangement, and was in part a gesture of affection and reconciliation. The two men eventually collaborated on the composition of the work, which was premiered in October 1887 at Cologne, when the soloists were Joachim and the cellist Robert Hausmann, the cellist in Joachim's own string quartet. Brahms himself conducted.

The combination of two instruments as widely separated in their range and tonal weight is not made easier by the support of an all-pervading orchestra. Brahms, who confessed that he was happier dealing with his own instrument, the piano, recognised this and scored the work with a relatively light hand, although he did use four horns. The concerto can in a sense be regarded as intimate chamber music, but laid out on an orchestral scale.

After a brief orchestral gesture the concerto actually begins with a cadenza, first for the cello alone, and then for the violin joined by the cello. The sighing falling two-note motive of the second subject is drawn from the principal notes of the first theme, and displays a characteristic Brahmsian metric ambiguity. There are several passages in this first movement where the soloists seem almost to become a single stringed instrument with an enormous range of five full octaves.

The slow movement and finale together balance the long opening movement both in weight and duration. Horns and upper woodwind quietly commence the Andante before the soloists introduce a phrase which might well be thought of at first as a mere figure of accompaniment, but which turns out to be the main subject of the movement, one of Brahms's richest melodies, with the soloists playing together in octaves, a texture only fleetingly heard in the opening movement.

The finale's elaborate rondo structure is full of references to the gypsy style that both Brahms and Joachim clearly loved. The movement contains a wealth of material, including a slowed down autumnal episode - perhaps a celebration of friendship and reconciliation, before the closing flourishes.

Brahms dedicated the concerto to Joachim; proof, if proof were needed, that the rift between the two had finally been healed.