Among musicologists and serious lovers of music, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is generally considered the high point of orchestration in the musical tradition of nineteenth-century Europe. It shows in most successful form Wagner's unsurpassed gift for using the instruments of the orchestra, and generations of students have worked with it to learn its technique. Tristan und Isolde also has a remarkable historical position. It was the opera that most of the post-Wagnerians used to build upon, an...