Fill your meadows with grass and the sheep will flock there; but fill a meadow with sheep and the wolves will flock thereafter. So too, fill a room with coats and hats, and a man will build a fence in the cold, and on stormy nights come back later; but let a man stay out the whole day and his wife will sit the evening alone in the stale, bitter air. On those dreary evenings, when the curve of a frown might be traced over a setting sun, fill a cloud with sunshine's lining and hope will come your way.
Below are a few compositions that, as Rubinstein has elsewhere described The Great Polonaise in A-flat, are "the closest to my heart."
Beethoven String Quartet Op. 131
Beethoven's Cavatina
Chopin Mazurka op. 28 No. 4
Shostakovich String Quartet 8
Symphony for Band in B Flat by Hindemith
Mendelssohn Octet, Op. 20