The period of 1898 to 1901 was a major new phase of Delius's career as a composer. In spending a good deal of time in Paris, he must have still harboured aspirations to break into the French concert world, yet, with the exception of the performances of two of his Danish Songs under d’Indy’s direction in 1901, this never materialised for him. Perhaps disillusioned by his failure to make any inroads into the Parisian concert scene, his sights instead fell on London and he travelled there in 1898 to explore means and ways of having Koanga performed and to make contacts with potential sponsors. London, at this time, was an important emerging musical centre. The music of Parry, Stanford and Mackenzie had enjoyed its heyday during the 1880s and 1890s and was still very much an extant influence; Sullivan was a household name, in part through the popularity of his operettas, but he was also admired as the composer of Ivanhoe and the conductor of the Leeds Festival. The young Elgar was also a name with which to reckon, especially after the success of his cantata Caractacus at Leeds, and younger men such as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor had come to prominence, the latter with his Hiawatha trilogy whose literary source had been of significant interest to Delius at the end of the 1880s. But equally noteworthy, and a fact Delius must surely have appreciated, even if he was ensconced at Grez for much of the time, was London's burgeoning concert scene, which was, in many ways, a serious rival to Paris. It boasted many fine German, Italian and French musicians as part of its cosmopolitan mix, and the likes of Hans Richter, the Austrian conductor, enjoyed an annual season in London and Birmingham with his orchestral concerts at St James’s Hall, choral programmes at the Birmingham Festival and opera performances at Drury Lane. Good orchestral players at the Philharmonic Society, Richter Concerts, the Crystal Palace and Henry Wood's Promenade Concerts were a more abundant commodity, and if properly harnessed, could act as the major catalyst Delius needed to have his music adequately performed since, ten years from the advent of Florida, he had heard precious little of his own work.