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What to do when a movie misidentifies the performers of licensed classical tracks?
I noticed that for certain movies, they sometimes miscredit the performers of licensed tracks, usually classical music. Sometimes, people on the internet misattribute a recording that is not credited in the movie. I wanted to bring attention to two movies: Hocus Pocus and The Shining.
Hocus Pocus plays the famous "Sabre Dance" by Aram Khachaturian during a scene in which one of the witches watches TV. Hocus Pocus's credits attribute the recording used in the film to APM and George Wilson. While this track was licensed to APM, it was actually a slightly cut-down recording taken from a Supraphon album titled Famous Ballet Music (Supraphon – 11 0643-2 011), conducted by Jiří Bělohlávek. George Wilson may have edited or selected the track and was not the actual arranger. I should note that much of the classical recordings distributed on APM's libraries are usually pre-existing recordings from budget labels.
The Shining uses a track titled "De Natura Sonoris No. 2," which is predominantly featured in the final scenes of the film. The soundtrack album does feature a recording conducted by that piece's composer, Krzysztof Penderecki. However, the recording does not match the recording present in the film; everything else on the soundtrack album appears to be correct. I ended up finding a release featuring the actual recording used in the film, which came from a Philips vinyl release in 1974 titled Kosmogonia (Philips – 6500 683), which was recorded by Andrzej Markowski, whose recording of Utrenja was also featured in the film.
I know how difficult it is to prove these, but I have been able to track down the actual albums these recordings originated from. Of course, IMDB requires visual evidence and not audible evidence. So that is why I asked what to do in a situation like this.





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