Christmas 1895 was spent in the Palast Hotel in Berlin where Stanford was later joined by Borwick and Plunket Greene. The concert at the Singakademie on 30 December, organised in collaboration with Wolff, was intended to be a major advertisement for British music in the German capital and Stanford, who was to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, hoped very much that, with assistance from the British Embassy, the Kaiser and other governmental dignitaries would attend. The audience, which included many eminent German musicians, was, according to the reviews, enthusiastic. Early in the new year he had the chance to meet Brahms for what proved to be the last time. The two men had been in contact in 1895 when Stanford had sent Brahms a copy of his Irish Songs and Ballads to Vienna in exchange for some portrait photographs Brahms had promised him:

In Berlin Stanford enjoyed the company of Joachim and other prominent musicians such as Eugene d’Albert who played both of Brahms's piano concertos under Brahms's direction (10 January) – it was the last time he appeared before the public as a conductor. Afterwards Joachim gave a dinner party in his honour to which Stanford, Hausmann and Herzogenberg were invited; it was a convivial affair which gave rise to the famous vignette regarding Brahms's personal loathing of eulogy:

‘We had a glorious time in Berlin and that last supper was a delightful end,’ he wrote to Joachim after he had arrived back in London.