The soundtrack album for Taking Sides is, naturally, filled with a fair amount of music conducted by
Wilhelm Furtwangler, the subject of the movie -- 23 minutes of classic recordings with
the Berlin Philharmonic, of the first and second movements of the
Beethoven Symphony No. 5, from 1943, and a brief four-minute excerpt of the first movement from
Bruckner's Symphony No. 7, dating from 1949. These are, in turn, juxtaposed variously with period popular music, including renditions of "Moonlight Serenade," "Embraceable You," and "Route 66" by
the Swing Dance Orchestra and the Andre Carol Orchestra, and "American Patrol" by the Andre Carol Orchestra. The Manon Quartet adds some
Schubert chamber music to the mix, and
Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin provide some modern recordings of
Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. The entire mix of sounds is more entertaining than one would expect, and one imagines that Deutsche Grammophon saw this as a way of "selling"
Furtwangler to a new generation of listeners -- though it's difficult to imagine anyone going to see Taking Sides who didn't already own at least some of his Deutsche Grammophon recordings, which would almost certainly include some
Beethoven. The annotation is more heavily weighted toward the movie than the music, but the sound quality is excellent, even on the seven-decade-old wartime recordings. ~ Bruce Eder