Despite all six children contracting measles one after another from the end of November 1883, Hans and Marie spent Christmas en famille. There were Hofkapelle duties on Christmas Day and a midday concert the following day but the couple went alone to Hans’ home town of Raab for a short break before Don Giovanni on 29 December. Concerts in Vienna between the New Year of 1884 and the end of the season celebrated or featured musicians of lowlier rank than Brahms. The Second Serenade by Robert Fuchs formed the centrepiece of the concert on 6 January and was followed by a new symphony by Giovanni Sgambati, the eminent Italian pianist and pupil of Liszt. Ignaz Brüll was the soloist in his Second Piano Concerto on 20 January. Robert Volkmann had died in October 1883 and Rosa Papier sang ‘An die Nacht’ on 16 December in his memory, but a more substantial tribute was paid to the composer when his Second Symphony was played on 9 March. Stanford's Serenade ended the same concert, whilst the one on 23 March began with Mendelssohn's rarely played overture to his opera Camacho's Wedding. The final concert of the season (6 April) contained two other comparatively rare overtures, Spohr's Jessonda and Volkmann's Richard III. Volkmann was not the only colleague who died at that time; another was Gustav Hölzl, the first Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger at Munich in 1868. In February 1884 Gustav Weber also died; it was he who had bedecked the podium in Pest for Richter's final appearances there:

Another friend whose death he mourned was Louis Brassin (at St Petersburg on 17 May), to whom Richter was grateful for securing the Brussels Lohengrin engagement of 1870, when the young conductor's fortunes were low after the Rheingold affair.