The second instalment of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s mini Brahms festival began with the composer’s most irreverent work: The Academic Festival Overture, where he pokes gentle fun at just about everything – academia, academics etc. It was an inspired way to begin an evening which was predominantly serious in tone.

I’ve always considered the Double Concerto for Violin and Cello, Brahms’ last orchestral score, rather gruff and dour, like the composer at that stage of his life, but, seeing it performed live, it became more like the musical olive branch that it was intended to be. Brahms offered it in an attempt at reconciliation with his estranged friend, the violinist Josef Joachim, after a rift caused by Brahms’ typically chivalrous defence of Joachim’s wife, when he suspected her of an affair a decade earlier. At the risk of sounding “wet”, seeing the spontaneous embrace of the two soloists, SSO concertmaster Andrew Haveron and Principal Cellist Umberto Clerici, at the conclusion of their performance, it made me realise the importance of friendship in music, and, indeed, life.

The work opens like a (somewhat) trenchant statement with an expansive recitative on the cello, and dialogue begins with both soloists contrasting the chief...