Brook Green Suite, for strings, H.190

Gustav Holst's Brook Green Suite, H. 190, was written in 1933 for St Paul's Girls' School junior orchestra for strings and consists of 3 movements. Holst wrote the suite while in hospital in the year before he died. The intention was to create a piece easy enough to play for younger members of the orchestra that is not simply a watered down version aimed at younger players or simple orchestrations of keyboard pieces. The name is thought to originate from Brook Green, the place of his wedding to his wife Isobel in 1901, or because of the close proximity of the Brook to the school, but most obviously arises from the location of the school on Brook Green in Hammersmith, London. The piece is composed in a more traditional idiom than most of his later pieces.