One of the most notable premieres of this year's Aldeburgh festival was also one of the most unusual: the first concert performance of Holst's tone poem Indra, composed in 1903, when Holst was in his late 20s. He heard the piece in a run-through by students at the Royal College of Music in London, then put the score in a box labelled "early horrors" with other juvenilia. Apart from a 1983 recording of an edited version, that was where Indra remained - until this performance at the Snape Maltings Concert Hall, with Sakari Oramo conducting the young professionals of the Britten-Pears Orchestra.

Indra is no masterpiece, but it is a peculiarly fascinating work. It reveals a transitional phase in Holst's career, when he was digesting the influence of Wagner (the ghost of Tristan und Isolde lingers in many of Indra's themes) and beginning to experiment and find his own voice. One of the first pieces to reflect Holst's interest in eastern cultures, Indra is based on a Hindu myth about the conflict between the gods of rain and drought. Having not heard a note of Indian music, Holst invented a sensuous soundworld to tell this exotic story.

The most individual feature of Indra is its use of repetition. Tiny fragments of melody played over and over create a hypnotic effect. For half the piece, the second violins play a single, sustained high note: like an extra-terrestrial object orbiting the rest of the orchestra. In such passages, Holst transcends his romantic heritage and creates startling textures, pointing towards his later achievements in the Planets. Oramo and the orchestra were magnificent advocates for this early work.

The rest of the programme investigated the lure of the Orient in music by Rimsky-Korsakov and Prokofiev. Rimsky's Sheherazade received an exuberant performance, with some superb solos from leader Ruth Rogers. Severin von Eckardstein was the impressively assured soloist in Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto, with its volatile mix of romantic melodies and primitivist rhythms.