Last week the Arabian Gulf, land of oil and excess, got its first symphony. The Qatar Symphony is a four-movement piece lasting almost one hour and is scored for full symphony orchestra. If I tell you that it's written by an Iraqi composer who once laboured under Saddam's regime, you won't be surprised to hear that it's a patriotic affair of whimsical folk tunes and strident marches. But if I then tell you that it's the first step on a journey to making the Gulf the new capital of high art and of classical music, you may fall off your seat.

Earlier, before the work's premiere at the Ritz Carlton in Doha, I'd watched a gang of bulldozers digging a hole for the planned skyscraper next to my hotel. Their ceaseless, subterranean activity seemed to me an analogy for the Gulf's classical-music scene. Bit by bit, it's taking shape - a conservatoire here, a concert hall there. By the time this new skyscraper is built, the foundations for a classical-music scene will have been laid. But is the Gulf really hungry for the arts, or is it building a cultural theme park?

“To really develop, the Gulf needs to attract talented people,” explains Tim Walker, the CEO of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which has just recruited Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, the wife of the UAE President, as patron of the orchestra's work in Dubai. “The best demand a rich cultural scene.”

It's the sort of remark guaranteed to send a shudder up the spine of honest music lovers. They won't have been reassured by what the region laid on recently. In March the LPO, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, performed at the fifth Abu Dhabi Festival. For two weeks the city's Emirates Palace auditorium was treated to performances by top artists and orchestras, including the Bolshoi, the violinist Sarah Chang and the pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. That was the good bit.

The bad bit was the opera gala, with opera's star-of-the-moment, Anna Netrebko. The Russian soprano gave the few locals who turned up a good show but you did wonder what they made of all those weeping Puccini arias. Several Arabs failed to return after the interval. With Netrebko's fiancé, the tenor Erwin Schrott - the Tom Jones of classical music - in attendance as well, one had the feeling that she was mainly here for the sun, the bucks and the wedding rings that she and Schrott bought in Dubai.

The festival's founder, Hoda Kanoo, was upbeat, however: “I am overwhelmed to think that in just five years we have been able to attract an artist such as Anna Netrebko. Classical music is the crown of the arts. For it to survive and keep surviving for centuries is fantastic and here people appreciate that.”

The Saadiyat Island exhibition, also at the palace, was clearly at the forefront of her mind. If Kanoo and her musical associates are right, this $30 billion (£15 billion) development off Abu Dhabi's coastline, to be completed in 2015, will be where the festival's audiences of the future will come from. Attractions for millionaire culture vultures include new outposts for the Louvre and the Guggenheim, a music theatre, an opera house and a concert hall.

The race is on. Up the coast in Dubai they're building the Dubai Culture Village, featuring a concert hall, opera house and a conservatoire. A UAE symphony orchestra is on the cards, to which the LPO will be an adviser and supporter. And in August in Doha another conservatoire and a national symphony orchestra will be launched at the Qatar Foundation.

But who will fill the lecture theatres, staff the orchestras and fill the concert halls when so few Qatar residents turn out for a concert with the biggest name in the opera business? The LPO's Tim Walker says that on the ground, classical music is thriving. “In Dubai alone 25,000 people are learning musical instruments. There's a private music school with 90 students, and there are excellent music stores. We will also be helping to train orchestral players. A viable musical life in the Gulf is possible.”

In addition to Saadiyat Island, other upmarket residential developments such as the World, Dubai's new off-shore town, in which the likes of David Beckham and Rod Stewart are rumoured to have invested, and the Pearl at Doha which will accommodate 42,000 people when it's completed in 2011, promise fresh hordes of wealthy concertgoers.

Last week's concert at the Ritz Carlton hotel was an opportunity to check the pulse of classical music in the Gulf. The Qatar Foundation, which commissioned the Qatar Symphony, claimed it was “the first step in an ongoing effort to celebrate music as one of the most important arts”.

As a step, it faltered somewhat. Official start times don't hold much sway here - the concert started late and people were still drifting in long after the appointed hour. They were still coming and going during the performance. One Arab visitor took a long phone call. If they couldn't concentrate through their own music, one wondered, how would they endure something on the scale of a Mahler symphony?

Perhaps thanks to the rousing Qatar national anthem that the composer Dr Salem Abdul-Karem, conducting an orchestra of more than 80 players of various nationalities, had judiciously woven into the finale of the piece, the Qatar Symphony received a standing ovation. The Westerners, the very people the Gulf hopes to attract, were less enthusiastic. Like so much here, Karem had chosen to clothe Qatar's musical heritage in a fake Western classical sound rather than giving it free expression.

Speaking before the concert, Dina Fakhro, the editor of the Bahrain-based magazine Arabian Lady, told me: “For Arabs, appreciating classical music is all about being culturally aware. Qatar Symphony is a first step for Arabs in being seen by Westerners as knowledgeable and cultural.”

An Egyptian journalist told me after the concert that Arabs worry that they have no heritage, no culture. But they do. What they lack is the confidence to express it. Is making the music of another culture the dominant expression the answer? No. A respectful coexistence for both and a sharing of musical ideas is the way forward.

John Evans is editor of Classic FM magazine

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