Cuarteto Típico Roberto Firpo

Historical background

The Cuarteto Típico Roberto Firpo is not Roberto Firpo's orchestra, but the small group he led alongside it. In 1936, taking advantage of the renewed popularity of the guardia vieja repertoire, Firpo founded a quartet to play in the old style, Michael Lavocah reports, and did not give up his orchestra for it: he ran both at once. The line-up came down to four instruments, piano, bandoneon and two violins. Benedetti notes that such flexibility marked a whole career: from 1913 to 1956 Firpo recorded in reduced groups, in large orchestras, in piano solos, in evocative quartets and in piano duets with his son, for Odeon, Era, Atlanta, Columbia and Victor, to the point of earning a label of his own at Odeon.

The quartet did not remain a personal curiosity. Around 1940 its success, together with the acclaimed performances of Pocholo and his group, gave rise to other small ensembles: the Los Ases quartet, created and led first by Juan Carlos Cambón and later by Gerónimo Bongioni, was one of them. The authors of La historia del tango place the group alongside Francisco Canaro's Pirincho quintet and Juan Maglio's last Pacho orchestra, three deliberate returns to an older manner, and single out in this brilliant quartet what sets them all apart: rhythm, precisely the opposite of the slowness of the típicas of their day.

Source: Pesce, Del Priore and Byron, La historia del tango : la Guardia Vieja, 1977; Michael Lavocah, Tango Stories: Musical Secrets; Benedetti, Nueva historia del tango : de los orígenes al siglo XXI, 2015.