Does anyone know who the composer in this story was?

Someone took a composer to hear an early British performance of Parsifal.* Asked what he thought of it, he replied,

“Well, it’s like the Brahms Requiem, only without the jokes.”

I have it down for some dour, ideally northern, English composer.

* The first staged performance was at Covent Garden on 2nd Februrary 1914.