Throughout his life, Rubinstein was famous as a solo pianist, a soloist in piano concertos, and even as a chamber musician. He retired from the stage at age eighty-nine, and died in Geneva, Switzerland, on 20 December 1982, at the age of ninety-five, and his body was cremated. On the first anniversary of his death, his ashes were buried in Jerusalem – as specified in his will – in a plot now nicknamed the "Rubinstein Forest" overlooking the Jerusalem Forest.