The Double Concerto in A minor was Brahms' final work for orchestra, written and premiered in 1887. Brahms approached the project with anxiety over writing for instruments that were not his own. He wrote it for the cellist Robert Hausmann, a frequent collaborator, and his old but estranged friend, violinist Joseph Joachim, mainly as a gesture of reconciliation. The concerto uses the motif A-E-F (permutation of F-A-E, personal motto of Joachim). Thirty-four years earlier, Brahms had been involved in a collaborative work using the F-A-E motif in tribute to Joachim. The reaction to the piece was largely cold, and even Clara Schumman critiziced the writing. Richard Cohn has included the first movement of this concerto in his discussions of triadic progressions from a Neo-Riemannian perspective.
