Daniel Barenboim conducts the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Weather forecast: sunny intervals, temperatures in the low 20s – that’s what passes for summer this year, I suppose.” Thus spake the not very thoughtful presenter on that not terribly thoughtful channel Classic FM, the one that aims to soothe and cosset you with the same endlessly repeated “smooth classics” until you are crying out for a little early Elliott Carter or even Country and Western. The effect of this bland-sounding even if slightly peevish comment was to rouse me to reflection on a general plague of unrealistic expectations.

In fact, after a pretty dismal past three weeks of July, summer picked up in southern England and the past few weeks have been little short of idyllic. “Temperatures in the low 20s” might sound unimpressive but for me a thermometer reading of around 23 degrees, just about warm enough to bask, certainly to swim, but not so hot that it saps energy or makes early afternoon tennis or golf unplayable, is perfect.

But it was that “what passes for summer” clause that drew my attention. The implication was that this perfectly normal and pleasant English late summer was a dark, cool shadow of what it should have been. But the imaginary yardstick against which it was failing was patently unrealistic.

If a phone-in line had been available, I might have called the dissatisfied presenter. “Here in southern England, my friend,” I would have said, “we straddle the 51st parallel, the same latitude as Labrador and parts of Siberia. We do not live in the balmy south, where the lemon trees flower. Our summer temperatures, for centuries, if not millennia, have averaged in the low 20s, and even though they are edging upwards, they have a long way to go before reaching Greek or Andalusian or Californian highs in the low 40s. And for that we have cause to be grateful. No terrifying forest fires threaten the suburbs of London. The lemon trees may not flower but the roses bloom all summer long.”

Dissatisfaction with the weather is nothing new. Long, long ago in Rome the poet Horace wrote to his friend Bullatius: “What did you think of Chios, and of famous Lesbos? What did you make of Smyrna and Colophon?” Bullatius was journeying around the Aegean, visting Greek islands and Ionian cities, while the stay-at-home poet looked after his small farm in the Sabine hills.

The little letter (Epistles, I, xi), that starts with deceptive casualness, turns into something serious. “Take whatever god has given you with a grateful hand, so that you can say you have lived happily, wherever it has been your lot to live ... Those who cross seas change only the weather, not their state of mind.” It seems an early version of Club Med, and a restless dissatisfaction with your own neck of the woods, existed even before the birth of Christ.

But dissatisfaction spreads far beyond the weather. People are more and more discontented with their bodies. Not long ago I watched one of the most disgusting documentaries I have ever seen, about teenage girls undergoing breast-enhancement surgery. What was disgusting was not so much the gory footage of operations, as the calculating looks on the surgeon’s faces performing these unethical procedures.

What the weather blues and the body blues have in common is an extreme flight from reality – not so much a desire to make the most of what is there as the compulsion to be somewhere else altogether, in another climate or another body.

This escapism has damaging consequences, obvious in the drastic and dangerous reconfiguration of perfectly healthy young bodies, but also in the neglect of the local which follows from the perpetual desire to escape from it. Outdoor swimming pools in Britain were closed in the 1980s partly on the understanding that cheap flights to the sun would always be available.

Sometimes, though, very high, if not unrealistic, expectations are justified. When I went to hear Daniel Barenboim conduct his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra at the Proms a week ago, I was struck by the intense seriousness, if not earnestness, of the relationship between orchestra and conductor. This was nothing like the one-of-the-lads mateyness with which Gustavo Dudamel (an intensely serious musician in his way) addresses the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela. Barenboim seemed to be treating his youth orchestra drawn from the politically opposed countries and territories of the Middle East as if it were the Berlin Philharmonic. Was this quite realistic, or appropriate?

But when I heard the orchestra play Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, a score that still sounds astonishingly modern, as well as fiendishly difficult to play, all my doubts evaporated. By making no allowances whatsoever, by expecting the highest of standards, Barenboim had paid his young players the ultimate compliment.

And they responded, with string playing of sumptuous refinement and brilliance.

harry.eyres@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/eyres