Had you closed your eyes at Thursday night's Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert, you might have imagined snapshots of an Italian countryside, seashore or Neapolitan festivities. This musical journey — a welcome change for many of us who've avoided overseas travel during the pandemic — was thanks to a vivid account of Richard Strauss' rarely heard Aus Italien (From Italy), led by music director Fabio Luisi. Opening with Carl Maria von Weber's Oberon Overture, the first half of the Meyerson Symphony Center concert included American composer Joan Tower's 1989 Flute Concerto. The nation's top transgender official came to Texas this weekend to call out what she called the… Luisi has revealed a penchant for Strauss' orchestral showpieces. In his first concert as music director-designate in 2019, he led the DSO in An Alpine Symphony, which colleague Scott Cantrell called "a sonic extravaganza" in this newspaper. Luisi will conduct the orchestra in Strauss' Don Juan at Saturday's gala concert, and in Metamorphosen in November. Aus Italien conjures up places Strauss visited during a trip to Italy. Completed when Strauss was only 22, the 47-minute work presents a suite of tone poems structured like a four-movement symphony, evincing influences from Liszt and Wagner. Yet it also suggests Strauss' developing voice in succulent harmonies, coloristic wind details and sections seesawing between mountaintop vistas and sweeping lyricism. Promising signs were apparent right from the start of the performance, when Luisi built hushed and glowing sonorities from the bottom to the top of the orchestra. Soon after, Luisi and the musicians luxuriated in romantic effusions, while keeping the textures moving. Lively passages blazed in the second movement, which also featured songful melodies in the violins. Bringing out dramatic impulses from the score, Luisi skillfully scaled dynamics and made daring tempo changes, hesitating slightly before pivotal downbeats. In the finale, the musicians whipped up plenty of excitement, but also exuded comic cheer in the tarantella, a folksy dance from southern Italy.