Brahms dedicated his Double Concerto to his friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, as a sign of the renewal of their lifelong friendship, which had been disrupted by Joachim’s divorce when Brahms took sides with Joachim’s wife Amalie. For the concerto’s dedication, Brahms wrote the sentence: “To him, for whom it was written”. So that there could be no doubt about who was meant, he used the musical motif A-E-F, a permutation of the anagram of Joachim’s personal motto F-A-E: Frei aber einsam – Free but Lonesome.

Lisa Batiashvili and Gautier Capuçon have played Brahms’s Double Concerto together many times, and on March 25, 26 and 27 they perform it in Prague once again, with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra led by Semyon Bychkov. Their appearance at the Rudolfinum will be recorded and released by the DECCA label.