As one of the leading pianists of his generation, Beethoven took it for granted that he would be the first to perform his own violin sonatas, cello sonatas and piano trios with leading string players; this was his personal chamber music, personal in a way that his string trios and string quartets could never be. His brilliance and originality as a pianist owed much to Christian Gottlob Neefe, who, though a Lutheran, became organist at the Catholic court in Bonn in 1782. In addition to piano and organ lessons, Neefe taught him composition and thorough-bass and introduced him to a wide range of music, including Bach's Forty-eight Preludes and Fugues, teaching which Beethoven warmly acknowledged in later years: ‘I thank you for the advice you have very often given me about making progress in my divine art. Should I ever become a great man, you will have a share in my success.’

Although he soon wrote himself out of his increasingly difficult string trios and string quartets and had to entrust them to others, Beethoven was a capable violinist and violist in his early years. He had two excellent violin teachers: Franz Rovantini, a relation by marriage of his mother, and Franz Ries, a close family friend and a generous and considerate man, who later became leader of the orchestra. Both of them had been pupils of the violinist, conductor and impresario Johann Peter Salomon, who eventually made his home in England and commissioned Haydn to compose his celebrated ‘London’ symphonies; so their approach to technical matters is likely to have been similar. After Rovantini's early death, Franz Ries, recently returned from three successful years as a soloist and quartet player in Vienna, took over as his violin teacher. Beethoven never forgot his practical and moral support at the time of his mother's death in 1787 and was able to return Ries's many kindnesses when, later in Vienna, he agreed to teach his son Ferdinand piano and composition. Franz Ries lived long enough to be present when Beethoven's statue was unveiled in Bonn during festivities directed by Liszt in 1845.

Like any small boy starting violin lessons, Beethoven did not always practise what he had been told to practise. A neighbour, Cecilia Fischer, remembered his father reprimanding him for improvising on the violin and the piano.