[After the Wagner Festival] for a while life jogged along in the regions of opera and orchestra as though nothing had happened that was worth remembering. Then Hermann Franke's brain began to get to work again. The unpractical, well-intentioned muddler who was primarily to be credited with an ill-organised undertaking that was nevertheless an achievement of historic value, suddenly bethought him once more of Hans Richter. … In the spring of 1879 he told me that there was a scheme on foot … for giving a series of Orchestral Festival Concerts, conducted by Richter, at St. James's Hall in the following May and June. The position of leading violin was to be shared by Franke and Schiever, and the band was to be a picked one, consisting of about half English, half foreign players.

The result justified his [Franke's] expectation; two years later [in 1879] at St. James's Hall, Richter's feat of conducting not only Wagnerian fragments but Beethoven symphonies entirely from memory furnished an absolute novelty and created quite a sensation. Thenceforth, Hans Richter's popularity in England was assured and his concerts, given once and sometimes twice every year, became a regular feature in the economy of London musical life.