After countless hours of practice, we are pleased to present our third annual Unsung Heroes e-cital, featuring works by lesser-known composers:

Presenting Unsung Heroes III

We thank our talented Piano World members for submitting their performances. A special thanks to Greg (gerg) who generously donates his time and talent behind the scenes with all of the tech work. Thanks Greg!

We hope you enjoy these fine performances and discover a few unsung heroes.

Best regards,
Heidi

Congrats to everyone on the great submissions! I'm looking forward to listening to all of them!


And sorry about my submission Heidi. I wasn't quite sure how to split my recording into two files, so I couldn't resubmit my recording in time.

And I'm sorry, dachshund, that we're unable to handle files bigger than 20MB. I would think you could divide it into two files with Audacity.

Maybe someone reading this with more tech know-how than me can advise you, in which case we would just allow you to make a late submission. We would love to listen!

So basically, I just load my recording into audacity, split it into two recordings and export both of them into two separate files. Then go to the submission page where I originally submitted my recording and submit both separate files together, right?

Why does it not say the name of the composer?

Sorry, I tried downloading my file into Audacity, but it wouldn't work.

I'll just post a link for those interested in hearing mine.
http://snd.sc/P9B6qd

As for the rest of the E-cital, I'm enjoying listening to everyone's submissions. I can't wait for the next E-cital! Hopefully I'll be able to get my submissions to work for that one.

Thanks Greg and Heidi! The website was working fine up until around 20 minutes ago, but now it gives error 404.

A couple of small things for Greg, if you wouldn't mind:

1) As debrucey points out, we could do with a column giving the composer's name.

2) In the "discussion" window, using the player messes up the focus for the comment textarea. I often like to listen to the recording while I'm typing my comments, but to be able to resume typing I have to click into another text box first, otherwise nothing appears and the spacebar makes the recording stop and start. If that could be fixed it would be great.

Thanks for all your work on this.

Thanks Dachshund. Glad you are able to participate!

debrucey, the composer's name is listed once you click on an individual performance. But I agree that yes, it would have been nice to have the composers name listed on the front page alongside the title of the piece.

And now I'm getting an error code on that above link, even though it worked earlier today

I'll look into that and get that fixed. Sorry for the delay, guys.

Topic stickied!

I love these e-citals!!!

Thank you, Kreisler!

To everyone, I'm so sorry for the tech problems we experienced today. I was hoping to have it up and running this morning, but the tech glitches have now been fixed!

Enjoy, and please let me know of any other tech issues.

Heidi, the 1st Movement of the Persichetti Sonata is missing -- apparently, I forgot to put my name in on that submission, and so it didn't get included. I think the 1st Movement is needed to get a complete "feel" for the piece, and so if you can get it included, I'd be most appreciative!

Hi, Heidi! I am enjoying! But I'm sorry to report that I did run into another tech issue when I tried to post a comment. I got an error message that says,

"Error on update (100):You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'm so grateful that you worked up these Esquisses, and I've been waiting for them' at line 1"

[all year, wr! I've been waiting for them all year, and I'm so glad to get to listen to them! ]

Thank you Greg and Heidi for all of your work!!!

--Andy

Yes, there's a problem with the commenting. I've been able to leave some comments, but then I get errors like the one C-bear described. It seems that if I leave the site for a while, and then come back, I can leave more comments before the problem comes back.

At any rate, I'm still able to listen.

LadyChen, I was trying to leave a comment about how much I enjoyed the Somers piece and your playing of it. I knew his name, but had hardly heard any of his music before, so it was great to get another taste of it.

From the look of that error message, I am guessing that single quotes (like this one ' ) are not escaped in the code. If you try to avoid using ' anywhere in your comments, they might work fine? Worth a try.

You might be right about the single quote, Julian. I'll report the problem to Greg and get that fixed. I'm glad we're at least able to listen and post our comments here!

Tim, sorry about the Perischetti 1st movement. Let me find out where it's hiding and get back to you.

Thanks WR, I really enjoyed your pieces as well -- you should post your recordings more often!

I just tracked down a couple more of Somers pieces -- a collection called 3 Sonnets, and his Sonata no. 1. Archives Canada and the Canadian Music Centre told me they were out of print, but apparently they were wrong. I was able to order them from Berandol, thankfully. They are more difficult than Strangeness of Heart though, so they should keep me busy for awhile .

Comments section is fixed!

Tim's First Movement of Perischetti is restored!

Thanks, Heidi!

I'm getting a "404 Not Found" when I click the link.

It's working okay now.

One quirk I just noticed is that accents, umlauts, etc. come through as cryptic symbols! How odd. This seemed to affect Inlanding, heidiv, and RachFan.

I'll make Greg aware of it.

Heidi, the site just went out on me again -- quite irritating! I ran into that yesterday as well. I guess I'll try it again later in the afternoon....

Well, I just now was able to get in again! Appears to be a touchy site, though!

The site has been up and down all day, and Greg figured out why...we've been hacked. All that means for us is that we have to move to a new venue. Also, if anyone is interested in cheap Cialis from Russia, I have several thousand contacts I can forward to you

Okay, please tell me that this works...

deleted

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but no it doesn't. The page sort of loads, but the formatting is all messed up, and the player doesn't appear.

Heidi, if it's any consolation, your original website prompt includes everything I wrote for the performances I hadn't yet reviewed -- which was a couple of hours ago. Like wr, I tried your last prompt, but it doesn't even get me to the site (it doesn't seem to recognize Unsung Heroes No III.)

Why would a site like this GET hacked? I can only remember that happening one other time -- that was the Colorado Springs Amateur Competition, and what did come up was a quite crude Muslim propaganda statement instead. Is it just to simple to hack for propaganda purposes, or is something deeper afoot?
Just curious.

Looks like the site working again. Yay!!

Our recordings are fine, not compromised in the least. The hackers are spamming another section of the site with ridiculous messages, which just makes our ecital run slower. They cannot change our recordings or our posts.

Why do they bother with a little site like ours? It's just a random thing. They have programs that generate mass advertisements, like those automated telephone calls you get just as you sit down to dinner.

I'm so glad the original link is working again though! Greg must have cleaned up some of the gunk that was causing the problem.

Right now it's fine here.

Uh-oh, 404 again.

Greg just informed me that the site had a "catastrophic failure," requiring him to move the entire site to a new server...meaning our e-cital will be unavailable for at least 24 hours.

I'm so sorry about this, and I share your disappointment. I know how hard we all worked to put this together, and how excited we've been to listen to these wonderful performances. I'll let you know when we're up and running again.

Thanks for your understanding,
Heidi

I will repeat: is this for propoaganda purposes, or is something deeper afoot? In the meantime, I will accept your sad assessment that "easy sites" can be randomly hacked for cruddy advertising spamming. In any event -- in the literal sense -- what an absolute crime!! Since you mentioned Russian Cialis knock-
offs, it kind of reminds me of those three Russian babes who conducted a risque anti-Putin event at a major Orthodox church in Moskva -- I'd like to wipe the s..t-eaten grin off their faces, and also here too!

Ahh, well.... this too shall pass.

LOL!

I have a feeling that Greg is working very hard to get the e-cital back in action. He takes this stuff very seriously, and all of these technical glitches are extra-ordinary. Perhaps Greg will share what he knows of the sleazy underworld of internet spamming when he gets everything running again. Did you ever watch the Pixar movie "The Incredibles"? I love this line: "Behold the Underminer! I am always beneath you! But nothing is beneath me!"

I'm sorry you and Greg are having to deal with these kinds of problems ( and with us ). I appreciate all of your efforts in putting it together, and working to keep it operational. Thank you.

It strictly propaganda, and some of it is hysterical! You can clearly tell that the spammers are not native English speakers. There are thousands of them too, not just one source.

Greg is working very hard. Any comments posted in the last couple of days will be lost, but at least we'll be back in action soon. Thanks for your support guys. I know virtually nothing about these things and wish I had more tech skills to help correct the problems.

We are back up and running!

PRESENTING UNSUNG HEROES III

The original link in the OP will no longer work, but the above will! You will notice that Greg has added a paragraph on the presentation page apologizing for the problems and explaining that all comments were lost in the transition. We literally have a clean slate.

Enjoy!

-------

Edit - Kreisler fixed the URL link in the OP, so either link will now work

Thanks, Heidi! Well, again, the 1st Movement of the Persichetti Sonata is missing -- can you retrieve it, or can I re-send it if it can't be retrieved?

Heidi, an update: I just uploaded the file again, this time with my name, and so it should be included in the Submissions.

Hi Tim,

Yes, it appears that the first movement has been added!

------------

Can we really dare to hope that we are done with the glitches? Fingers crossed. So far, so good. I look forward to listening to everyone's submissions.

Also, Kreisler was kind enough to edit the URL in the original post...meaning that anyone who clicks on the original link will be directed to the correct site.

Thanks all,
Heidi

No big thing, but the page title references the Beethoven e-cital, not Unsung III.

Thanks, wr. I've made Greg aware of the problems, and he assures me that he fixed them, but I'm still seeing two problems with the "Present" page. If I could fix them myself, I would!

On the bright side, we're able to listen again.

Part of me wants to re-construct all of the comments I had already made, just so there's a record of them somewhere. The other part of me is too lazy, and hopes that all of those comments I made were read by the performers. I also wish there was a way to re-create the "buzz," as though the e-cital had just gone "live."

Ah, well. Suffice it to say, there sure is a lot of good music posted to this e-cital! Nice job, contributors!

Thanks again, Heidi and Greg!

--Andy

I see we've been spammed again.

I think it is strange that they are always so quick. Maybe it is somebody who is actually reading this thread and knows exactly when the site is up.

That posting has been there a few days. As I've said, Greg said he'd fix it. He's involved in a huge project at work right now and doesn't have tme to check in, unfortunately.

But hey! I see marketing potential. To recreate the buzz, as Andy says, maybe we could advertise it as a dual purpose e-cital. Couldn't you just see it now? Enjoy wonderful performances by our PW members and buy Viagra at the same time!!

Maybe someone reading this with more tech know-how than me can advise you, in which case we would just allow you to make a late submission. We would love to listen!