It started over a game of tennis and developed into perhaps the least likely of friendships between two giants in the world of music.

On one side of the net, master improviser and arguably America’s greatest songwriter, George Gershwin; on the other, classical music’s most controversial and influential innovator, Arnold Schoenberg.

When George Met Arnold: Sam O’Sullivan (left) and Chris Burke.

The two were neighbours in Los Angeles in the 1930s after Schoenberg had left his native Vienna when Hitler came to power, and their surprising bromance was the subject of a thoroughly entertaining and unusual one-off Sydney Symphony Orchestra concert put together by conductor Roger Benedict and star pianist Simon Tedeschi.

Spliced into musical extracts from both composers was a film co-written by the pair and directed by Laurence Coy. Actors Chris Burke (Arnold) and Sam O’Sullivan (George), dressed in their whites and sporting rackets, swap ideas about art and music and the stories of their lives in between rallies.

There’s a good deal of humour – some sly jabs at other composers like Stravinsky and Ravel – and Gershwin modestly shrugs off Schoenberg’s assertion that he is America’s Schubert, saying that...