Eugen d'Albert, whose mother came from Newcastle and whose father Charles (a composer and ballet master born in Hamburg) was French, was then aged seventeen. He was a pupil of Ernst Pauer and had received his musical education at the National Training School for Music in London (forerunner of the present Royal College of Music), whose Principal was Sir Arthur Sullivan. He was also under the patronage of Marie Joshua. Pauer and Mrs Joshua brought him to the attention of Richter, who decided that his future as a concert pianist was assured and decided to take him back with him to Vienna and to effect an introduction to Liszt. The story runs in the Richter family that with six mouths to feed, a seventh would make no difference, but letters from the young man to his father imply that a financial arrangement was made with Richter, which also provided Eugen with pocket money. Several letters were written by d'Albert over a six-month period to Mrs Joshua, first from Richter's Vienna home and subsequently from Weimar after he had become Liszt's pupil. His Anglophobia and love for things German meant that, once his studies had started with Liszt, he never lived in England again. His father had arranged for him to study with Leschetizky but Richter advised against this and undertook to tutor him himself. He considered that Leschetizky would completely change d'Albert's hand position and technique and also held the view that he was too interested in his female pupils for d'Albert's own good. The letters to Mrs Joshua provide a fascinating account of life in Vienna, where the young man spent six months under the roof of its foremost conductor.

Richter set off for home with d'Albert on 30 October 1881 and within a week the young man had dispatched his first impressions to Mrs Joshua. In many ways d'Albert's place in the domestic household bears an uncanny resemblance to Richter's own youthful experience at Tribschen. D'Albert's immediate popularity with the Richter children reflects exactly the sympathetic relationship Richter had had with Wagner's children and step-children fifteen years earlier.