Recorded especially for the
Woody Allen film, this soundtrack contains one side "Rhapsody in Blue" (
Zubin Mehta conducting the
New York Philharmonic less than a year after assuming the post) with another side a medley of
George Gershwin's songs orchestrated and adapted by
Tom Pierson. The film Manhattan was
Allen's love letter to his favorite city in the world, and both sides certainly overflow with a grand romantic idealism. The medleys suffer from making some pretty disparate
Gershwin songs sound same-y, but in context with
Allen's black and white images, they work very well. ~ Ted Mills