Wolfgang Wagner: An Appreciation

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Summary: About "Wofgang Wagner --- An Appreciation"
Review: Larry Lueck, the founder and president of the Wagner Society of Hawaii, has made an important contribution to the literature about Wolfgang Wagner, Bayreuth, and studies of Richard Wagner. The book is skillfully edited and presents twenty separate essays with 142 photographs, most of them published here for the first time.

Lueck has assembled an illustrious group of composers, conductors, singers, and critics to produce an important book for experts on Wagner as well as for novices. Readers will be especially fascinated by the manner in which Lueck and other contributors balance criticism and praise for Wolfgang Wagner and his half-century of achievement at Bayreuth, which his detractors will find difficult to gainsay.

In addition to his adept editing of this attractive book, Lueck has provided the preface and two major essays that detractors of Wolfgang Wagner must read. The list of contributors demonstrates successful coordination with writers in different parts of the world. Contributors to the volume in the sequence they appear are Larry Lueck, Klaus Schultz, Penelope Turing, Astrid Varnay, Peter Dannenberg, Pierre Boulez, Sir Donald McIntyre, John Tomlinson, Graham Clark, Poul Elming, Linda Watson, Robert Dean Smith, Philip W. Raines, Monika Hofer, and Jim Becker.