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I am using Musescore (see musescore.org).  It does provide the option to export sound files.  Their quality is supposed to be determined by the sound font used, but I have done no work on that.  What I mean is actually rubato:  In those sound files "musicians" never take a breath, the music just goes on as if by metronome and that makes it dead.

Maybe I should clarify what I meant by "sad summary".  It meant "summary conceived in sadness".

I use the playback option to check for errors; they usually scream out if you do that.  I have considered making sound files, have so far no experience in it.  But in order to sound anything even remotely like music they would have to be worked at measure by measure and so far I have been too lazy to do that.

I should mention that the copy on IMSLP is not complete (probably oversights when it was digitized).  I got in contact with the library it came from and the administrator promised me to fix the errors.  Until then some movements have only three parts and if you play them you have one person sitting out.  The first quartet is complete and will be posted first.

The book by Friedland is indeed a dissertation.  I read it about two years ago.  Now that you mention it I remember the passage about the piano concerto I had forgotten.  A first step might be to try and find out if the BNF has an inventory of the Farrenc documents on line (the Theodor Fröhlich estate and the Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee estate have such an inventories for example) to confirm its existence.  if you could hunt down Friedland (she ought to be still alive) she might tell you how she got access to it, but this will be hard to do; a simple Google search turned up nothing useful for me (I had hoped she would be an academic somewhere and have a larger publication record by now--maybe she does but I couldn't find it).

Does Mazas count as sung or unsung? 

As a composer of violin etudes and duos for students he is certainly well established.  I have always liked his etudes and use them regularly for my daily practice sessions.  To me they are much better compositions than the other "classic" etudes (mainly Kreutzer and Fiorillo, Rode--I admit it--is too hard for me). 

His duos on the other hand (I know only a fraction of them) for all the melodic charm often present seem a little simple minded:  Most of the time one violin plays the melody, the other some simple accompaniment, than they switch roles, often literally repeating the music in sections of maybe 16 measures or so.  Maybe because they are written for children they tend to be much simpler harmonically than the etudes (where more advanced harmony must be used to provide opportunities for the training of intonation if for no other reasons).

Wondering what other compositions of his are around I checked IMSLP and found his three quartets op. 7 (parts from about 1822; together with the trios op.18 for 2 vln and viola they seem to be the only chamber pieces for more than two players in Mazas' output).  I don't think there is a modern edition available, so I typeset the score to get a better picture and I was struck by the quality of these fully grown up pieces.  Beyond the charm of his melodies we find:  Imaginative use of the quartet medium, the four voices mostly nicely individualized.  They are not quatuors brillants.  Being a violin virtuoso Mazas included virtuoso episodes for the first fiddler--sometimes truly virtuoso like a whole variation in double stops--but so did Haydn and even Beethoven.  These quartets remind me of Onslow--three quartets to an opus, each quartet with its individual character, similarities in the use of the medium, heavy use of chromaticism.  However only Onslow's earliest quartets were already published when Mazas composed his set.

These quartets seem to have been completely forgotten--are therefore clearly unsung--and I think they ought to be played.  I will post my finished scores and sets of parts on IMSLP when they are properly proof read and cleaned up (the copy of the old parts on IMSLP has not very good print quality and contains rather many errors--accidentals forgotten, incorrect dynamics, measures with too many beats in them, inconsistent articulation markings etc.--so a new typeset will help people who want to play). 

You are right that this discussion can not resolve the problem.  I want to take issue though with one detail in your sad summary:

And if I see Gergiev conducting his own Tsjaikovsky with score, I know enough.
Barenboim, Abbado, Eschenbach, Zacharias do not need the score for whatever piece. By coincidence, these conductors are also mostly great solo pianists.

The habit of performing from memory always reminds me of circus animals:  It has nothing to do with the musical merit of the performance, yet it is all but mandatory for soloists and more and more for conductors too.  I know that Busoni among others has written that if you don't know a piece by heart you don't know it well enough to perform.  This may very well be true for Busoni, but it was arrogant of him to assume the same for everyone else.

Moving on:  If you make performing from memory mandatory you will end up damaging the very unsung repertoire you care so deeply about.  People will have to waste time memorizing scores which will narrow their repertoire.

I do believe though that thalbergmad has a point.  Say Viotti:  The a-minor concerto is truly great, everything else I have seen or heard of his is mediocre.  Bruch is a little along the same lines though not quite as extreme:  His famous VC is sung for a reason, many other of his pieces deserve to be unsung IMHO, no matter how much the anecdote says is irritated him.

I have been trying to find arguments / hypotheses about this question in the forum, since I am not clear about it myself.  Maybe a new thread is in order if somebody feels up to writing a more substantial kick off post than I feel I can contribute.

This is a question I have wanted to ask myself for some time.  Thanks for putting it out there!

A few random comments:

A common mistake to my opinion is the Haydn calling Papa, while it was Mozart who called CPE Bach our Papa.

This one is on Schumann, one of his two unforgivable journalistic sins (isn't the word "Papa"--if not applied to one's own father--inherently disrespectful, also in the Mozart/CPE Bach quote?).

To Adriano's list of reasons:  I have some objections:  About the lazy musicians:  Orchestra musicians may or may not be lazy (they come in both flavors in my experience), but they do not get to choose the repertoire, not even in amateur orchestras.  So no blame on them (and in my experience they complain more often about having to play the same music over and over than about having to learn new pieces).  Big name soloists (none of them are lazy) on the other hand are as much about competition as about music:  They have to perform to an insane schedule in order to be and stay big names.  They have little time to learn new music.  Better give the local concertmaster the opportunity IMHO. 

Which brings me to the "second rate orchestras".  I am somewhat allergic to this term--it occurs too often.  We ought to get away from our focus on perfection, i.e. technical perfection, the only measurable kind (this is also true for the "sound" of recordings).  In a successful performance things happen below the surface of the music and grab the listener's attention, the occasional intonation insecurity or other mishap becomes unimportant in this situation.  And this effect happens often also with second and even lower rated performers.  I have heard absolutely spellbinding performances from ad hoc quartets made up of no name professionals (or only local fame in some cases).  I am all for second rate and amateur orchestras doing unsung music (I used to be a member of the "Akademisches Orchester" in Zürich.  It is different now, but in those days unsung music was the bulk of what we played).

It may have to do with the genre (I am talking about the string trio--I am assuming it is the standard combination of Vln, Viola, Cello).  Just look at how many professional (permanent of semi-permanent) string quartets exist and compare to the number of string trios.  This is because string trios are difficult to play in the sense that they are sounding fragile and almost brittle, lacking the fourth voice that would produce a "full" harmony (some composers compensate by using lots of double stopping, exacerbating intonation problems).  This sort of "thin" sound is not popular these days as people aim at "great" tones, full, juicy sounds (unfortunately IMHO, but such a HiFi sound can cover a lot of sins). Of course this problem is most difficult for performances in large halls, but even in recordings the sound is "incomplete".  The ideal venue for string trios and similar combinations (2 Vln, Viola or Flute, Vln, Viola etc.) is someone's living room with an audience of 20 or less, there they shine.

Let us know your decision when you make it.

Actually there are recordings of the 3 last sonatas available:
F-Major op. 15: Pavane #7545 (along with piano trio op. 14/2 and cello sonata op. 16/1) with the Trio Portici.
E-Major op. 29 and a-minor op. 31: Ligia #10317807 with Sandrine Cantoreggi, violin and Laurent Martin, piano.

BTW:  Onslow called the last three sonatas "duos" so to search for them you have to use that term.

There are actually only four, op. 11 no. 1 and 2 are missing (does anybody know where a copy of the old editions might be found?).
As to a recommendation:  It is a pretty difficult choice because they are quite different in character.  No. 3 in f-minor is very good in its way (if you like f-minor works) but is overly dominated by the piano.  No. 4 in F-major is lighter in character and features some witty pseudo counterpoint (if your "theme" consists entirely of the tones of the F-major triad you can play "canons" at any time lag you choose; Onslow brings it unison at the beginning and then various such "canons" at the key junctions of the sonata form).  Of no. 5 and 6 I believe there exists a recording; 5 is in E-major, bright and technically quite hard (for the violinist; I can't judge difficulty for piano parts), 6 in a minor, more serious with some semi baroque themes in the first movement, maybe not immediately ravishing but one of those pieces that grows on you as you get to know it better.

Thanks for this information.  What struck me at the time I read the autobiography is that Fröhlich isn't mentioned even once in the book.

But, seriously, what's wrong with including such works as concertos by Herz or even Kalkbrenner, in concerts from time to time, accepting that they are not necessarily "great" music?

Obviously nothing, but with a caveat:  I once heard a chamber music evening which started with Brahms' G-major string sextet and followed that up with "Souvenir de Florence" (not even an unsung work, rather over-sung).  The effect was that the Tschaikowsky appeared shallow and sentimental by contrast.  I bet this would also happen if you programmed one of Beethoven's piano concerto followed by Moszkowky's (never mind that this is unlikely as the convention has been one solo work per evening).

What is important though is to keep in mind that there is such a thing as great music:  Including among the unsung stuff--for example IMHO the piano trio by Fanny Hensel.  And on the other hand not that great music among the sungs--see above.  After all J.S. Bach himself was unsung for 100 years.

Having started this thread I could not get away from the statement of the "vielfache Satzfehler" (sorry, still need someone to tell me the English word for "Satzfehler").  I decided to investigate a little and looked at the score of his g-minor quartet from 1826, i.e. early in his career.  I focused on parallel fifths and octaves as the most egregious errors and counted them up, not counting them if they were in passages with more than 4 voices (double stops).  If the same error was repeated it was counted twice.
Results: 1. movement (them and variations): 5 parallel fifths and 20 parallel octaves or primes.
2. movement (Scherzo):  3 parallel octaves
3. movement (Adagio):  7 parallel fifths, 10 parallel octaves
4. movement (Vivace):  4 parallel fifths, 8 parallel octaves
This is rather a lot I believe, especially as I certainly missed a few.  Interestingly the work sounds inspired and original, though sometimes a little clumsily put together, in spite of these many errors.
I wondered if he got over this problem as he matured and looked at his piano quartet from 1835 though not as quantitatively as above.  It seems that he improved from 1826 in this regard (the work makes a much more mature impression overall anyhow), but not to perfection.  Since a piano quartet has almost at all times more than 4 voices an direct comparison is not possible; however in passages with only four voices (melody in the piano in octaves plus the 3 strings) there are still several parallel octaves (no fifths though).