Setrak Setrakian - Identified recordings

I agree with you totally. we have identified three at least.

 

Hello to all members,
I didn't reply till now, because my piano page closed, thinking I can't post in Audio Room,

First, that demo video is me, my age is 69 years old, the other photo is me at age 60,

I want to apologies to all members for this all error,

During the Lebanon civil war I lost most my recordings and documents by burning my home, some of my recordings was in my car and it's safe,

From 1987 till 1999 I was Director of Ganatchian music College/Beirut,

Because of the war result I had open heart surgery, and my wife became paralyzed by brain surgery, and I am only one who care of her, I can't record any more because I am not working and life is very difficult with me.

For 7 years I am not working staying at home to take care to my wife, any one is free to visit and see her and my suffer.

About adding mp3s, some of are my recordings, and other are downloaded from internet sites for free,

I know it's not right thing to do, but it happen it's my live first mistake and I am very sorry and I apologize to all members.

I know I am not welcome to Pianist page in Piano Society, so I will say good luck to all, and let us be friends.

Best
Setrak Setrakian

 

I received this information yesterday from one of our members. How do you respond to that?

 

Setrak, or whoever hides behind the name,

After having submitted fake recordings, there is no reason why we should believe anything of what you are saying. And it was a pretty lame story even before the truth came out.

Cydonia is right, even one faked recording makes everything else irrelevant and will cause you to be banned from the site. It does not matter anymore which - if any - of the recordings are performed by someone named Setrakian, and whether or not such a person actually exists or has existed. Just like it is not relevant whether your sad stories are true or not. There is just no excuse for invading the Internet (not just PS) with pirated recordings.

 

@ Robert

May I ask who "MAH" is?

Yes, this story sounds very, very unlikely to me. This may sound naive, but I can't believe a 69-year-old pianist, who has made professional recordings for decades, a tremendous effort as we all know, would steal other artists' work.

Anyway, there is no way to maintain a friendly relationship to the user "Setrak", in my opinion.

 

It's rather OT in this thread, but I can't resist mentioning that a batch of my recordings from last summer was recorded in swimming trunks. In defence I can say it was extremely hot that day 8)

 

As a newbie maybe I'm not in possession of all facts but is it just possible this guy was unaware of the house rules and thought he was doing us favour by sharing other’s performances? I don’t think I’m naïve but I don’t like to see people castigated unnecessarily. Did he actually make false claims?

Anyway, trying to lighten the mood after all this - as a player at the 'lower' end of the ability range (as compared to most on this site) I have been trying to pluck up courage to submit something for audition. It occurs to me that at least I am unlikely to be accused of using somebody else's material – what a compliment that would be!

 

It can well be (and in fact is likely) that people don't read our Terms and Conditons before posting. But he presented the recordings as played by himself, and bowed at all the wooing compliments, and we for sure will castigate and expurgate anybody who does that - whether they did it on purpose or not.

Perhaps if you started out saying you are a professor, bla blah, you'd get away with it for a while :lol:

 

Dear Chris!

I haven't visited the forum in awhile and I'm quite shocked. Yet, I do hope this is some very exceptionary case. Just sending some love to you and the forum

 

I am sorry, but I must respectfully disagree on this point. Who of us here have not done equally bad things at some stages of our lives? Although I am not Christion,I believe in forgivenes of sins. I am impressed by the words "Let him without sin cast the first stone" as well as"Judge not, lest ye be judged". By this I do not mean that one should not judge the ACT --of corse one should, but we should take into account human weaknesses. I am sorry to sound so damed preachy, but PLEASE be a little more charitable! I found his plea for friendship quite moving, and I,for one , offer my friendship, although I can never condone his behavior.
Raymond

 

It is rather hard to argue with this.

All the same, we just do not want spammers and scammers on this site (which is based on trust and honesty), however sorry they say they are. Anybody wanting to maintain a relationship, let us know and we can give you his email address.

 

I never meant that we should have him back on the site; I don't belioeve we should. All I meant is that our attitude towards him should be friendly and sympathetic with his obvious weakness, without in the least excusing the act itself.
Raymond

 

I do understand what you mean and we have all sinned. Of course. My problem is that he jeopardize Piano Society in his action and I have historically been locked out from 3 co-location accounts and the Swedish Police grabbed my server once so I am really sick and tired of such problems. This could potentially be next problem and therefore, I had to make a statement. Of course, the Police thing was really just an accident from their side as our server happened to be located in the same co-location as Pirate Bay and the police just raided everything. The other lockouts were just a proof that web location and co-locations do not stick to their part of the agreement as when I really use all bandwidth they guarantee me, they just locked me out without even notifying me first. They are all a bunch of liars and perhaps I should create a web site to hang them out .

Anyway, I kind of feel sorry for Setrak too. It really seems like he did not understand the extent of what he was doing and why all hard working pianists would rack down on it with power once revealed. Perhaps things are partly true. Perhaps a lot is true about him except for the world class skills on the piano. He might be a good amateur like the rest of us. Therefore, I have removed the big NEWS sign from the first page. I have had enough with this now and would like to go back to normal service and spend my energy on something more creative. Perhaps play the piano?

Interestingly enough, someone launched a Denial-of-Service attack towards us this afternoon and got the MySQL-server to freak out. I nearly could not fix it as the server was extremely loaded and it took me 5-10 minutes to write a single command which I knew would at least stop it. One cannot help to make the connection to Setrak but probably, this is just a coincidence. If not, it is really serious.

 

In that case he would not have cracked up like he did. I think he is fully aware of what he is doing, given the professional way he tags the recordings and the zeal with which he proliferated his bio and recordings all over the Internet. He seems to me like a technically proficientl fraud (though without the intelligence to back it up). And his stories sound like those of the Nigerian spam masters. Possibly he's laughing behind our back now. I may be all wrong though, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. As you say we may as well put this behind us now and move on.

BTW I thought that news item was rather good :wink: Did not realize he'd ripped Horovitz recordings as well. The guy has guts, you have to hand him that.

 

Sorry to stir the soup again, but IMHO the guy perfectly knew what he was doing. To add ID tags on other artists MP3s with "Copyright Setrak, blablabla" is enough for me.

I agree one should not judge, but on the other hand if one sees a crime going on and doesn't react, one can also be accused of criminal negligence.

So let's not be more catholic than the Pope, right?

Back to the normal TV programmation. 8)

 

Is the pope catholic ??? :shock:

 

He used to be, when he was Polish

 

Those were the days :lol:

 

8)

 

Yep, it was really strange time