If I may risk making things even worse here (albeit wishing to do nothing of the sort) by pouring OIL, of all things, on the presently troubled waters of this thread, I might like to report that, despite the statutory attitude in Iran of late towards Western music, it has just come to my attention that the Osnabrück Symphony Orchestra has recently become the first Western "classical" ensemble to perform in Iran since the 1979 revolution; with its female members attired in deference to the Islamic dress code, the orchestra evidently gave a concert including Brahms's Fourth Symphony as part of a cultural exchange between Germany and Iran that last year saw the Tehran Symphony Orchestra (which I must confess I had thought had been disbanded under the present diktats in Iran) perform in Osnabrück. State radio, TV and newpapers remain forbidden to broadcast / write about Western "classical" music, yet this event was still permitted to happen. When one looks at the crazy routing of all things to do with Western "classical" music in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution in Iran and then the subsequent dilution of this hard-nosed attitude followed by Ahmadinejad's clampdown followed by this, one can perhaps begin to realise that what goes around comes around, fortunately - even in Iran as it is currently "administered". I don't think that the climate in Iran is yet quite suited to the possibility of Jonathan Powell giving a Sorabji recital to include Djami, Gulistan or The Garden of Iran (from Sorabji's Symphonic Variations), but...
Best,
Alistair