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Carlos Cobián is considered as a fundamental tango musician, and he
appeared on stage almost at the same time as Osvaldo Fresedo, another
brilliant artist. Juan Carlos Cobián had new ideas, concerning both
composition and musical execution. Since the beginning of his career in
1913, when he replaced Roberto Firpo as Genaro’s pianist, it was
noticeable that Cobián had the idea of giving tango a new accent, a
different aesthetic tessitura, which liberated it from the last chains
of musical primitivism. It was said that Cobián was the “tango
aristocrat”. And this nickname makes sense if we think about his
contribution to a higher artistic hierarchy, giving tango a musical
clothing which would allow it to inaugurate the process of development
of the renewing movements. He introduced substantial changes in the
conducting function of piano in the mechanism of the typical orchestra.
He incorporated the “arpeggio tenth” in the left hand and adopted
the method of filling with “bass drawings” the emptiness of melodic
openings. All these innovations caused a dramatic change in the
traditional usage of piano, that up to that moment, had been reduced to
a function of rhythmic marcation over the strict tonality chords. In
this way, he was building the foundations of the piano “harmonized
accompaniment” in the typical orchestras, of which definitive
structuring would correspond to Francisco de Caro some time later. This
interpretative tendency was used by remarkable musicians of that time,
such as Carlos Flores, Eduardo Pereyra and José Maria Rizutti;
and, later on, by Osvaldo Pugliese, José Pascual, Juan Polito, Eduardo
Scalise, José Tinelli, Ángel Massini, Armando Federico and many more
pianists, who represented a moment and a musical conception of tango of
which attractiveness and artistic value still lasts. Juan Carlos Cobián
was also talented for composing, and in that aspect he was accompanied
by Enrique Delfino, with whom he defined a new musical stream called
“romanza tango”. After leaving Fresedo’s orchestra, Cobián always
formed excellent groups. But their labour was always interrupted by Cobián’s
passion for travelling. |
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