Beethoven's symphonies - which versions would you recommmend?

For me, nobody beats George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. The sound is impeccable, and the interpretations are all agreeable, retaining the best of the 'golden age' interpretations of the early 1900s without any of the wild excesses those conductors would take without sacrificing current, informed standards of the newer cycles. They're still old enough, however, that they have an almost LP-like 'glow' of blended sound-- none of the close-up fluorescent spotlight sound that, in my opinion, is a weakness of many recent recordings. Hearing a recording will never be the same as a performance, no matter how faithfully each detail of sound is reproduced, so I feel it's useless to try. The Szell/Cleveland set strikes the right balance between picking up detail and blending the sounds into a whole. And, again, as far as his interpretations, there is nothing to fault; on par as a set with those of Karajan, Toscanini and Furtwangler, bested only perhaps by Bernstien in a few individual symphonies.