I kind of disagree with this. For the post-Beethoven era, sure, but the standard way of playing Beethoven and before tends to be heavily biased towards an uninformed modern idea of what classical music "should" be, which is stodgy, slow, smooth, heavily refined, overcooked with crescendoes and decrescendos, and quite inauthentic. Almost as though it's shameful for music to be immediate and exciting at the risk of being unrefined. If you compare Furtwängler's[1] Beethoven symphonies to Christopher Hogwood's... one sounds like music for wealthy old people at a concert hall. The other sounds like
music. (Don't get me started on the routine butchering of Bach...)
But that's just my opinion. The point is it really pays to try different conductors, performers and performances before the 1830s or so. I'm not sure why that time changes things, but I'd guess the romantic style that came after more closely aligns with artsy-fartsy performance practices, and that composers also became more careful about marking how their works should be performed. Anyway, trying different things is also a good exercise in developing personal taste, which is a key ingredient of music appreciation.
[1] I originally had von Karajan here, but I went back to have a listen and it wasn't as bad as I remembered. Substituted Furtwängler's inexplicably famous recordings, which sound like the entire orchestra took Valium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bOxcryX1VE . Compare to Beethoven's recommended tempo and historical style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y07M8e5g-Y
But that's just my opinion. The point is it really pays to try different conductors, performers and performances before the 1830s or so. I'm not sure why that time changes things, but I'd guess the romantic style that came after more closely aligns with artsy-fartsy performance practices, and that composers also became more careful about marking how their works should be performed. Anyway, trying different things is also a good exercise in developing personal taste, which is a key ingredient of music appreciation.
[1] I originally had von Karajan here, but I went back to have a listen and it wasn't as bad as I remembered. Substituted Furtwängler's inexplicably famous recordings, which sound like the entire orchestra took Valium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bOxcryX1VE . Compare to Beethoven's recommended tempo and historical style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y07M8e5g-Y