New York Times "Classical Music in Review" Tuesday Oct 8, 1991 James R. Oestreich
Traditional Iranian Music - Weill Recital Hall

To an outsider, the program of traditional Iranian music presented at the Weill Recital Hall on Saturday evening proved eminently satisfying, though it raised more questions than it answered about Iranian musical tradition. A half-hour improvisation by Mohammad Reza Lotfi on setar, especially, seemed heavily dependent for it's effect on modern electronics. Mr. Lotfi sounded for all the world like a rock guitarist at times, drawing a raucous, churning, pounding sonority from the setar.

Mr. Lotfi is a great bear of a man, and the mere fact that his exquisite little four-stringed instrument survived the performance intact and more or less in tune suggested that he was handling it with considerable delicacy. The Western listener could only wonder what impact, if any, Mr. Lotfi's energetic strumming might have made without amplification in this relatively small, acoustically bright hall.

It would have been nice to hear Mr. Lotfi's setar and tar (a larger string instrument), Dariush Saghafi's santur (hammer dulcimer) and Ali Farasat's zarb (drum) unaided, if only briefly, to get a sense of their true scale and sound. It would also have been helpful for the uninitiated listener to have been given some idea what Mr. Lotfi was singing (presumably in Persian) through parts of his setar improvisation and during a longer collaboration with Mr. Saghafi and Mr. Farasat.

For all of that, these were wonderfully communicative and generally enthralling performances. With remarkable concentration Mr. Saghafi sustained a colorful harmonic haze while seamlessly evolving smooth melodies and spiky figurations. Mr. Farasat patiently waited out Mr. Saghafi's and Mr. Lotfi's solos, then slipped in and out seemingly at whim, providing understated rhythmic counterpoint. Mr. Saghafi and Mr. Lotfi, alternating in the lead, challenged each other with improvised lines to be imitated at close quarters and in quick succession.

Music, alas, is not a universal language, and many of the expressive qualities of the quarter-tone dissonances and rhythmic subtleties here were undoubtedly lost on the Western ear. Yet a certain exalted level of musicianship can at least convey the broad strokes of an unfamiliar idiom unmistakably, and these performers were obviously masters.