In his 1891 London season, Richter engaged Paderewski to perform his own Piano Concerto in A minor, after its premiere had been demanded by Annette Essipoff in Vienna two years earlier. The concert took place on 22 June, a year after Paderewski had played its first performance in London under Henschel. Apart from the interest of hearing Beethoven's three Leonore Overtures in the order of their composition (that is Nos. 2, 3, 1) on 8 June, the first London performance of Bruckner's Third Symphony on 29 June and the premiere of Stanford's choral ballad The Battle of the Baltic on 20 July, there was nothing new in Richter's repertoire in 1891. This was noted by Shaw in The World. Engel had had his blind spots, Wagner being a particular target for this musical dilettante who, in his chatty columns, often appeared more interested in society gossip than in any serious writing. He also repeated himself with his descriptions of Richter's near infallible memory or as a Napoleon of the orchestra. Shaw's weakness was his bigoted dislike of Brahms (the folly of which he was ready to acknowledge and recant forty years later), but though an admirer of Richter, he was critical of programme planning motivated by commercial interests, or of any lack of orchestral preparation as a consequence of the conductor's busy schedule. In June 1891 he wrote:

Fortunately Richter was no composer, or else Shaw would probably have had him in his sights. The socialist critic waged many a campaign against the knights of the music world – Parry, Stanford, Mackenzie, Cowen and Sullivan – often because of their academic backgrounds at music colleges or universities. When Elgar arrived, devoid of knighthood and not formally trained in music, Shaw pronounced the revival (since Purcell) of English music.