Music director Fabio Luisi conducts the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, soloists, the Dallas Symphony Chorus, Baltimore Choral Arts Society and Dallas Symphony Children’s Chorus in Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony at the Meyerson Symphony Center on May 15, 2026.
Scott Cantrell/Special Contributor
I’m pretty sure those were the loudest sounds I’ve ever heard in the Meyerson Symphony Center. And, yes, they were thrilling: seven powerful soloists, multiple choruses filling two levels of choral seating, extra brass blazing away from the back of the hall, room-shaking rumbles from the organ.
With music director Fabio Luisi conducting the super-sized Dallas Symphony Orchestra et al. Friday night, such was the conclusion of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony.
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It’s not the longest of Mahler’s nine finished symphonies, but it’s the most extravagantly scored — thus its relatively rare performances. Instrumentation includes a mandolin and a harmonium at the pianissimo end of the dynamic range, and before the final climax, an additional soprano voice floats a heavenly invitation.
The two parts of the nearly hour-and-a-half symphony, presented here without intermission, aren’t obvious companions. The first part sets the Latin Pentecost hymn “Veni, creator spiritus,” invoking gifts of the Holy Spirit. The second part is a nearly operatic realization of the final scene of Goethe’s epic Faust.
Here chorus and soloists set a scene of forested mountains and ravines. Holy hermits and penitents (with Latin IDs) and angelic choruses sing praises of love and urge the disgraced Faust’s disembodied spirit upward to redemption. The redemptive Mater Gloriosa is hailed as “Virgin, Mother, Majesty, Goddess,” but also as “the Eternal Feminine.”
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Ultimately, though, the two parts are connected by seeking purer, higher things. And musically they’re full of thematic and motivic cross references.
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The work demands powerhouse soloists, and it certainly had them Friday. Frustratingly, the printed program didn’t identify which singer took which role in Part Two.
Limmie Pulliam delivered Dr. Marianus’ punishing high notes, and everything else, with sinewy heroism. Baritone Luke Sutliff (who portrayed Pater Ecstaticus) and bass Insung Sim (Pater Profundus) supplied handsome and hefty tones, although they didn’t quite match the higher-pitched singers.
Only four of the five female soloists were onstage, all with commanding voices: sopranos Rachel Willis-Sørensen and Meghan Kasanders, and mezzos Olesya Petrova and Renée Tatum. Near the end, singing from the Grand Tier, Deanna Breiwick floated Mater Gloriosa’s urgings with celestial sublimity.
Placing the seven main soloists all the way upstage was probably a misjudgment. They mostly projected well enough, but repeated patches out of sync with the orchestra suggested they couldn’t hear what was going on in front of them.
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With the Dallas Symphony Chorus joined by the Baltimore Choral Arts Society (both directed by Anthony Blake Clark), choral climaxes were of apocalyptic force, but well balanced and finished. Quieter singing, notably in the first entrance of the Chorus Mysticus — “here insufficiency becomes fulfillment” — was aptly rapt. The Dallas Symphony Children’s Chorus (Ellie Lin, artistic director) supplied fresh tones for angels and “blessed boys.”
Luisi had a sure feeling for the music’s drama, its shape and proportions, its magical colors and textures. Top to bottom — brasses, especially — the orchestra played gloriously.
Details
Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Meyerson Symphony Center, 2301 Flora St., Dallas. $47 to $274. 214-849-4376, dallassymphony.org.