I'm more puzzled by the fact that you appear to think this move to homogoneity which leads to, in your words a "faceless...uniform sound" can be thought of as an improvement to the musical experience other than in the matter of technical slickness.
A few years ago I was given a ticket to a Prom in which a young pianist of Eastern origin played a Chopin Concerto in no different a manner than several thousand other young pianists from that part of the world. Accurate, polished but "faceless" and completely unmemorable.
The rest of the concert was pretty routine too.
I'm reminded of the story of a noted piano pedagogue who took a group of his students to a recital by D'Albert who was then in his last years and played fistfuls of wrong notes throughout the programme. Afterwards the students were mocking the performance but the teacher admonished them by saying "I'd rather hear all of his wrong notes than all of your polished playing put together."
And how many of today's orchestras have really "levelled up" to the standards of The Philharmonia, The Berlin Philharmonic, The Vienna Philharmonic , The Philadelphia, New York PO and other great orchestras when Maestros like Karajan, Ormandy, Klemperer and Bernstein were wielding the baton ?
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