The Takács Quartet is internationally famous, but it didn't start out that way.

Thirty-odd years ago, four students at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary, started their own group and named it after the first violinist, Gábor Takács-Nagy.

What set this student ensemble apart from the thousands that form every year in schools worldwide is that they performed together so well that they began winning awards: the International String Quartet Competition, the Portsmouth and Bordeaux Competitions, the Budapest International String Quartet Competition, and so on.

They also began releasing CDs, including a recently completed cycle of Beethoven quartets and all six Bartók quartets, for which they won a Gramophone Award in 1998.

Thirty years, however, is a long time, and the quartet has undergone changes. Although originally Hungarian, in 1983 it became the resident ensemble at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which remains its home. In 1993, its namesake left the ensemble to return to Hungary, and shortly thereafter its violist succumbed to a fatal illness. Both were replaced by English musicians, one of whom was in turn replaced by an American just last year.

Today, the quartet is as international as its reputation: Hungarian name, American home, and musicians from three different countries living a shared tradition — Edward Dusinberre (first violin) from England, Károly Schranz (second violin) from Hungary, Geraldine Walther (viola) from the U.S., and András Fejér (cello) from Hungary.

Tomorrow's program presents the Takács Quartet's most representative repertoire, Beethoven and Bartók.

The two Beethoven quartets come from opposite ends of his life: Op. 18, No. 5, composed during his early maturity, just as he was beginning to make a name for himself in Vienna, and Op. 132, composed in deafness and ill health, not long before he died.

The earlier work reveals Beethoven's nod to tradition and especially to Mozart, as well as flashes of the inspiration that eventually made him revolutionary. The later work, one of the enigmatic "late quartets" that have so intrigued the world, reveals nothing more or less than the inner thoughts of genius.

Op. 132 is probably best known for its third movement, composed shortly after Beethoven recovered from a near-fatal illness that kept him bedridden for a month.

Sandwiched between the two Beethoven works is the last of Bartók's six quartets, 20th-century masterpieces composed across the span of his life.

Bartók also combined tradition and innovation in his final quartets. In fact, No. 6 is almost a personal retrospective, recalling themes and moods from his earliest quartets and reworking them into a new context.

Tomorrow's program should provide interesting juxtapositions — of Hungarian-English-American playing styles, of early and late works by Beethoven, of late works by two of chamber music's greatest composers — and whatever connections the Takács Quartet creates of the whole.