nice freebie from WXQR
http://www.wqxr.org/#/programs/carnegie/2011/nov/16/
I own (and like) the Gardiner Beethoven Symphonies boxset
but this live performance (of the 5th esp) is better IMO: you hear the same transparency and superior technique of the CD (even Szell would have been impressed with ORR!), but the strings in particular sound fuller, lusher (and hence HIP since after all Beethoven is not Bach) than in the CD recording. As some listener commented on the WXQR site the final movement of the 5th is an edge-of-seat romp. That's the kind of almost out of control, risk-it-all performance that you can only hear in a concert hall. I wish I had been there that night!
