Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony perform generally soulless, by-the-book renditions of classical music. By soulless I don’t mean lacking feeling, but carefully studied amounts of fake feeling in the 20%-more-rasta, pop divas shouting out as many note changes into a word as possible way.
And so I didn’t think I would like their version of Beethoven’s Third Symphony. But it makes sense considering the DJ mentioned that the Third was heavily influential on the classical music from then on.
Because MTT and the SFO always seem to be emulating generic classical music, it makes sense that they would do a good job of the Eroica since it apparently set the pattern for generic classical music. And they did do a good job of it. They didn’t even change their playing style: their style was made for the piece.