Got to hear picrel live yesterday, it was an absolute treat. Neptune, with the offstage chorus, was particularly enchanting. According to Wikipedia
>The innovative nature of Holst's music caused some initial hostility among a minority of critics, but the suite quickly became and has remained popular, influential and widely performed.
> It was Boult's decision not to play all seven movements at this concert. Although Holst would have liked the suite to be played complete, Boult's view was that when the public were being presented with a completely new language of this kind, "half an hour of it was as much as they could take in".[19]
I don't get it, what's so innovative and transgressive about it? Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful music, but it seems to me to be completely in line with all the late 19th/early 20th tone poems