Brahms's most ambitious work for cello is his last work using orchestra, the Double Concerto, Op.102. Brahms wrote it in part to fulfill Hausmann's request for a concerto; he even joked in a letter to the cellist that he hoped Hausmann would forgive him for having added a solo violin to the cello part. Much better known is the other motivation behind the work's creation, to regain Joachim's friendship. Clara Schumann called it "The Reconciliation Concerto." In that regard Brahms succeeded, but the work itself filled Brahms with doubts. His goal was to write as if for one large stringed instrument, but he was not convinced he had succeeded. During his life the concerto never received the unqualified approbation of his friends. Some of them even saw it as a sign of greatly diminished powers, and whispered "senility"! It is certainly curious that to this day, the Double Concerto is in much greater favor with performers and audiences than with historians, who have tended until recently to ignore it.

And what about a concerto? Florence May, the English pianist who studied with Brahms and went on to write an invaluable biography of him, quotes what Hausmann told her in an interview. The cellist had gone to Brahms's flat a few months before his death, to play through Dvorák's newly published cello concerto. Brahms accompanied, and at the end of the work exclaimed, "Had I known that such a violoncello concerto as that could be written, I could have tried to compose one myself!"

It is difficult to know what to make of this story, for of course Brahms knew what the cello was capable of. His own writing for the instrument throughout his life demonstrates that convincingly. He knew the Schumann concerto, Beethoven's Triple Concerto, and Robert Volkmann's concerto, a work which he once planned to place on one of his programs. He knew Golterman well enough to present him one of his manuscripts as a gift. He probably knew Saint-Saëns's concertos too, given his voracious appetite for keeping up with what was happening all over Europe. In addition, Brahms had been to Leipzig in January of 1895, and had spent an entire evening with Klengel in his home. He was dazzled by the speed, facility and accuracy of Klengel's technique, particularly in thumb position. But most interesting of all, Brahms knew Dvorák's Cello Concerto intimately, well before it was published and while he still had every possibility of embarking on another composition had he so wished.