I would generally agree with Jhold on period practice, although for a majestic 9th I would reccomend Furwanglers Bayreuth perfomance. The strange thing about the fast tempo period conductors is that the 1930's performances by Toscanini are the closest to them in tempi and phrasing.
"period interpretation" beethoven?
I was at a wonderful classical music store in northern Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago where they told me about some relatively recent (15 years or less) performances that had benefitted from scholarly study into beethoven's forces and tempos. Unfortunately, I have lost the paper on which I wrote this down... anybody got a pointer to who this might be?