When Fabio Luisi guest-conducted the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in March 2018, his first impression of the orchestra, he told me, was, "They don't know how good they are." He left enough of an impression that three months later, he was named the orchestra's next music director.

The Italian maestro obviously set out to demonstrate those skills — his own as well as the orchestra's — Thursday night at the Meyerson Symphony Center. In the first of five programs he's conducting this season as music director-designate, Luisi opened and closed with two brilliant and fiercely challenging orchestral showpieces: the Dallas premiere of American composer Augusta Read Thomas' Aureole and Richard Strauss' mountain-climbing extravaganza, An Alpine Symphony. In between came Beethoven's Emperor Piano Concerto, with Beatrice Rana as soloist.