Malek Jandali believes that the Arab world deserves symphonies. These elaborate compositions are not historically part of the Arab musical tradition, but for the German-born Syrian-American composer, his latest work is an attempt to show the rest of the classical world that the Middle East is part of the conversation and “deserves a symphony celebrating this unique vocabulary.” Titled The Desert Rose and debuting at the National Museum of Qatar, the symphony was inspired by a natural phenomenon of the same name, where sand, salt and gypsum crystals evaporate, erode and eventually form petal sh…