In 1853-54 he produced this set of musical portraits, character sketches of members of her court. Even if we could identify the pieces with Crown Prince This or Grand Duke That, it would scarcely add to appreciation of them. They are, as one would expect, salon pieces, written to amuse and doubtless gently flatter, cast in what would be idioms familiar to the court from Rubinstein's playing. Perhaps we can now enjoy them more as involuntary portraits of some of the composers looking over the young lion's shoulder - Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, John Field all seem to nod approvingly, and there are pats on the back from some of the virtuosos who influenced his technique, men such as Moscheles and Kalkbrenner (I did not notice the hand of Liszt).
The music needs rather gentler handling than it gets from Joseph Banowetz, or from the rather heavy and clangy recording, but it is all perfectly agreeable, a mid-19th-century version of what would now be called 'easy listening'.'