Popularly known as the Symphony of a Thousand, Mahler’s heaven-storming choral Symphony No. 8 in F-flat Major consists of two panels. Part I, set to the ninth-century Pentecostal hymn “Veni, creator spiritus,” plunges a listener into a sort of psychedelic Pandemonium. Part II, torn from the final pages of Goethe’s Faust, mounts a dizzying celestial three-ring circus, culminating in a mystic chorus, eight of the most celebrated lines of poetry in any language (it’s the source of the phrase “the Eternal Feminine”). In all its tremendousness, Mahler’s Eighth presents logistical challenges the conductor Ingo Metzmacher merely thrives on, and in the domed “Kuppelsaal” of the Hannover Congress Centrum, he has at his disposal the kind of grandly theatrical concert space the music cries out for. —Matthew Gurewitsch