Brahms and Tchaikovsky were totally B.F.F. – Best Frenemies Forever.

The latter famously confided to his diary, “I have played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard!”

And that’s only the short version.

The two shared the same birthday, May 7 (Brahms born in 1833 and Tchaikovsky in 1840). Unfortunately, that was about all they had in common – Brahms, the great classicist among Romantics, and Tchaikovsky, always heart-on-the-sleeve.

Or so they thought, until the two met on New Year’s Day, in 1888. Surprise! They actually delighted in one another’s company. There was much drinking and backslapping and drinking and hanging on one another’s shoulders and drinking and happy tears and drinking. (Of course, all this took place in spite of Brahms falling asleep during a rehearsal of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.) In fact, they liked one another so well, they decided to do it again.

However, the two never could reconcile themselves to one another’s music. After a lovely evening with Brahms, during which both men drank and smoked prodigiously, while Adolph Brodsky (the violinist who had introduced Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto) rehearsed with some friends a Brahms piano trio, Mrs. Brodsky asked Tchaikovsky what he had thought of the piece.

“Don’t be angry with me, my dear friend,” he said, “but I did not like it.”

Happy birthday, boys!

PHOTOS: Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky (left) and Johannes Brahms, agreeing to disagree