Orquesta Típica Edgardo DonatoEl Rey del pizzicatoEdgardo Donato*14.04.1897 +15.02.1963 Tango is joy Titles:about 350 To buyTangoTimeTravel offers all recordings between 1940 und 1945 in great quality. Also www.tangotunes.com. offers dozens of transfers in very good quality. |
La melodia del corazon - 1940 - Romeo Gavioli
Edgardo with orchestra in the movie Despues del Carneval (1933) with the tango Alas rotasDiscografiee.g. www.el-recodo.com |
Stylerhythmical, simple, cheeky, cheerful TypicalWild violin playing in solos and pizzicato, accordion |
Greatest hitsSe va la vida, El huracán, A media luz, Sinfonía de arrabal and many others |
Important singers- Félix Guitiérrez (1932-1933) - Horacio Lagos (1935-1942) - Lita Morales (1941-1942) - Romeo Gavioli (1940-1942) Important musicians- Violin: Edgardo Donato - Piano: Osvaldo Donato - Akkordeon: Osvaldo Bertone |
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Edgardo Donato, one of the most eccentric figures in tango. He was often far ahead of his time in the 1930s, always good for surprises and thus in many ways he could be called an orquesta atípica. D'Arienzo revolutionised tango with nervous rhythms in 1936? Donato had already achieved this in 1933 with titles such as El acomodo, Tierrita, Qué hacés, Qué hacés! Female voices? In Donato's case, his violinist Armando Julio Piovani initially sang in a female voice under the pseudonym Randona. Then Donato used his singer Lita Morales alone, as a duet or even as a trio, long before duets became standard in other orchestras. An accordion among the bandoneons? Of course. a little cheerfulness is added to the melancholy tone of the bandoneon, this most typical of all tango instruments. Donato rarely pursued with his music Discépolo's Tango is a sad thought that you can dance. He wanted funny, exuberant, good-humoured entertainment. A sad tango is rarely found in his repertoire. And it actually fits in well that Donato lost his orchestra and singers at the height of tango culture at the beginning of the 1940s and could no longer really keep up musically. This very versatile, talented musician was and is often underestimated. |
From chamber musician to orchestra directorAlthough Donato was born in Buenos Aires, he grew up on the other side of the Río de la Plata in Montevideo. His father conducted a chamber orchestra there. As the name suggests, the family was descended from Italian immigrantsthe. Of the musical family - of the nine children, two other sons (Ascianio/cello, Osvaldo/piano) went on to become musicians. Edgardo was an outstanding violinist, but also quite childish. He soon broke away from the world of opera music, to which his father had introduced him, and joined Montevideo's first jazz band in 1919 with his virtuoso violin playing.
It was not until 1927, when Donato was 30 years old, that his take-off on the tango scene began. Together with his long-time mate Roberto Zerrillo, who, like many of his fellow musicians, had sought his fortune in Europe the months before and had returned from there full of ideas, Donato conquered the hearts of Montevideo and Buenos Aires within a few months. After signing a radio contract, the boys had themselves announced with the unassuming words Los 9 ases del tango, la más formidable orquesta típica criolla que jamás se ha escuchado (The nine aces of tango, the most impressive orchestra ever heard). Se va la vidaTheir most famous composition and a big hit was Se va la vida (1928), which Donato recorded again and again. The lyrics of this tango, which is still played regularly today and which calls on a young woman to enjoy her life without fear or regret, were written by María Luisa Carnelli, who at the time still had to hide behind the pseudonym Luis Mario. |
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Se va la vida - 1930Luis Díaz |
Se va la vida - 1936Horacio Lagos |
Se va la vida - 1961Andrés Galarce |
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After Zerrillo fell in love with the orchestra's singer, Azucena Maizani, and went on tour with her to Spain and Portugal, Donato founded his own orchestra in 1930 called Edgardo Donato y sus Muchachos, in which his brother Ascanio played the cello while another brother, Osvaldo, sat behind the piano keys. The singer was the black Luis Díaz. 130 recordings on the Brunswick label and appearances in cinemas and theatres testify to the popularity of Donato and his boys. Strong tango womenMaría Luisa Carnelli, born in 1898, worked as a poet, writer, journalist and war reporter. The militant intellectual communist travelled to numerous countries and died in BA in 1987. Maruja Pacheco (1916-1983), a trained pianist, actress, singer, lyricist, composer and writer who ended her career with children's songs, not only wrote Triqui trá especially for Lita Morales, but also the lyrics for Donato's compositions Alas Rotas and Lágrimas. Her most important compositions, for which she contributed music and lyrics, are undoubtedly the two Donato superhits Sinfonía de Arrabal and El Adiós. |
El huracánThe Great Depression after 1929 and the introduction of the sound film hit the tango industry right in the heart. Many orchestras gave up, sought their fortune in the world of theatre or cabaret or - like Canaro or De Caro - tried to win over a new audience with more symphonic tangos. Donato, on the other hand, continued to fly the dancers' flag with a lively style, with which he cultivated a snappy, rhythmic tango that anticipated the D'Arienzo revolution in somewhat more disreputable dance establishments with a poorer reputation, such as the Ocean Dancing in the harbour area. In 1932, Donato began his second recording career and switched from Brunswick, which had fallen victim to the crisis, to the Argentinian-American label RCA Victor. And the very first recording, which he composed together with his brother Osvaldo, hit like a hammer: El huracán is full of vigour, energy and originality. No wonder that many of today's tango cover bands still have this musical whirlwind in their repertoire. Although a musical storm seems to sweep through every phrase of this tango, the lyrics do not sing about a weather phenomenon but, metaphorically dressed up, about a woman who shreds the rose garden of a love so that it will never bloom again.
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El huracán - 1932Felix GutierrezOlga Nikola & Dmitriy Kuznetsov2021 - Kyiv, Ukraine |
El huracán - 1950Carlos Almada |
El huracán - 1961Andrés Galarce |
The man from the moonDonato was a virtuoso violinist who successfully led his orchestra for many decades. However, because of his absent-mindedness, he was also considered to be living on the moon. One time he wanted to engage a singer who had long since joined his orchestra, one time he left the tram without his wife. Once, full of exuberance, he is said to have smashed the colourful light bulbs that illuminated the stage with his violin bow in time to the music. |
Dance music!
Many of Donato's songs are harmonically not really complex, he did not break new ground, he did not seek to join the avant-garde. He rather belonged to the group of traditionalists around Canaro, Lomuto or Firpo. And when the other orchestras reached a completely new, higher level at the beginning of the 1940s in terms of harmony, rhythm and the use of the great voices of the time, he only managed to join to a certain extent. However, his tangos, valses and milongas have their very own lively, cheerful character thanks to their rhythmic playfulness, often even cheekiness, and the special sound of the bandoneon section because of Bartolins Accordeon. Donato's violin playing plays a major part in this. On the one hand, there are the pizzicati, the sharp, staccato-like, plucked, fast sequences of notes that he elicits from his violin, making many of his tangos of the thirties simply more rousing, brisker, more playful and rhythmically more varied than those of his colleagues. In general, Donato experimented with his violin like hardly anyone else. His fingers elicited far more than the usual sounds and noises from the strings, the bow and the violin body. Sometimes he would clamp the bow between his knees and then scrub it with the violin case or play the violin behind his back. Another important building block for the good-humoured sound was that Donato integrated an accordion into the bandoneon series in 1934, which the 13-year-old boy wonder Osvaldo Bertone/Bartolin played with virtuosity. The sound and texture of the orchestra was much brighter and more cheerful as a result. It is not surprising that this good-humoured combo, much like Enrique Rodriguez's, was an orchestra of all styles and therefore also played rancheras, pasodobles, foxtrots and the like. In 1936, when there was not yet enough electronic amplification, he teamed up with De Caro, Tanturi, Lomuto and Juan Canaro and together they put together a gigantic orchestra for the carnival balls. It's hard to imagine how a singer could be heard alongside 40 instruments. |
... Many different singers
Donato always had convincing singers, but he was initially unable to retain them permanently. The Afro-Argentine Felix Gutiérrez was initially a professional boxer, but always loved singing. He had learnt to play the guitar at Julio de Caro's father's music school, which is why he sang his first tangos for Julio de Caro while still a teenager. But it was not until 1932, with the super hit El huracán, that he made his breakthrough. In the meantime, Donato engaged the tenor Alberto Gómez, who also worked a lot with the ‘Orquesta Típica Victor’, or Hugo de Carril, who was very popular as a solo artist in Argentina in the 1950s and 1960s. And then there was Donato's first female voice, called Randona. Behind this name lies Donato's rather masculine violinist Armando Julio Piovani, who warbled sweetly in high registers, often in duets with the orchestra's star singers. It was only in Horacio Lagos, who joined the orchestra in 1935, that Donato found a voice that was perfectly and permanently integrated into the orchestra, at the latest with the new recording of the super hit Se va la vida (1936). In 1939, Lago's wife Lita Morales finally joined him on stage, which was an absolute novelty, because normally nobody danced to female voices. But Donato's plan worked out, as the popularity of the ‘Randona’ had already foreshadowed. The first duett, Carnaval de mi Barrio (1939), was and still is one of the biggest of Donatos hits.
At the end of 1939, Romeo Gaviolo completed the trio of singers and was a perfect choice for Donato: like Donato, he came from Montevideo, and he not only phrased tenderly and sensitively with his voice, but also played the violin brilliantly and was therefore able to stand in for Donato when necessary. |
A triangular liaison and the end of the orchestraJust as tango culture reached its absolute peak in 1942/43, Donato's orchestra, which had actually been so successful, imploded, even though everything had gone so well so far. Firstly, in 1942, the now no longer quite so young accordion prodigy Osvaldo Bertone said goodbye to the orchestra and the world of tango and started an extremely successful career with his own jazz band under his stage name ‘Washington Bertolin’. And the trio of singers also displayed serious, human dissonance. Romeo, whose name was obviously the programme, had an affair with Lita, Horacio's wife. After the last joint recordings, including the marvellous vals La Shunca, Lita left the orchestra. In 1942, Donato was once again reunited with his two singers in a musical project. At the end of 1942, they parted ways. Hardly any more recordings were made until 1944, when most of the musicians finally turned their backs on Donato and tried their luck with Horacio Lagos as a singer under the direction of Donato's brother Osvaldo. Osvaldo had been playing the keys in Donato's orchestra since 1927 and had always been a key pillar of success, not only because of his extremely successful compositions such as the milonga Sácale Punta or the super hit El huracán. However, neither Osvaldo nor Edgardo played a significant role in the development of music on either side of the Río de la Plata after 1940. Donato himself remained active and enterprising. And after the loss of his orchestra he even tried two projects: On the one hand, he endeavoured to find an answer to the stylistic development towards quieter, musically more complex tangos with a completely newly founded orchestra with the programmatic name Orquesta típica moderna; on the other hand, in the hope of high sales figures, he founded a quartet called Los caballeros del recuerdo, which played very traditional tangos of the Guardia Vieja, i.e. from before 1920, in the style of the very popular quartets by Firpo and Canaro. After 1950, when many new record labels emerged, Donato restarted as well and produced around two dozen recordings for the Argentinian label Pampa. As with so many other orchestras ot this period, these recordings are anything but bad, but they mostly lack the originality, cheekiness and vivacity of the early years. However, the new recording of A media Luz (Carlos Almeda) or the wonderful duet T.B.C. (Roberto Morel and Raúl Ángelo, 1953) show that Donato still had what it takes. Life as a tango musician is draining, and so Edgardo, like many of his colleagues, died far too early of a heart attack in 1963. |
The composer
Donato would probably have been financially secure from a young age thanks to his 200 or so compositions alone, including the frivolous A media luz (1925), which, together with La Cumparsita and El choclo, is one of the three most widely covered and popular Argentinian tangos in the world. But the milongas La llorona, Pensalo bien and La milonga que faltaba as well as the typical Donato tangos El acomodo, Mi serenata, Se va la vida and rather silly numbers such as Gato were also penned by Edgardo. Donato not only appeared in the first Argentinian sound film ¡Tango! (1933), he also wrote the music for several films, including Riachuelo (1934), whose title song, sung by Alberto Gómez, was a great success. |
Donato for dancersMilonga
Canaro's milongas are by far the most inspiring, the most danceable, with the greatest milonga feeling - but right after that come Donato's playful, fresh, lively rhythmic pearls, full of Donatos pizzicato violin playing that automatically brings a smile to the faces of all dancers. Framed by a predictable Marcato, they give the dancers many moments to play imaginatively with the music. While the instrumental milongas El torito (1939), Papas calientes (1937) or El lengue (1940) are very cosy for a milonga at 80 bpm, the dancers have to act faster in Ella es así, Sacale punta (both 1938) or La milonga que faltaba (all 1938, Lagos) at around 95 bpm with the singer Lagos, while Campo afuera (Lagos, 1940) or De punta a punta (1939) are quite speedy at around 105 bpm. |
La milonga que faltaba - 1938LagosAyse & MaximilianoCULLERA TANGO FESTIVAL 2024 |
Sacale punta - 1938LagosChicho Frumboli and Juana SepulvedaPorec, 2017 |
Campo afuera - 1940LagosEleonora Kalganova & London Hong Seoul, Korea 2018 |
Vals
Donato's valses are cheerful, easy-to-digest stuff. In Estrellita mía (1940), La shunca (1941) and the somewhat slower Volverás pero cuándo? the trio of singers shines. We seem to have heard La trapera (1936, Guitiérrez), Con tus besos or ¿Qué será? (both 1938, Lagos) to often, an effect perhaps also created by the overly characteristic accordion sound. Noches corrientes (1939, Morales) instead is really really fast. |
Noches corrientes - 1939Litas MoralesAlejandra Mantiñan & Mariano OteroTango Magno 2018 |
Con tus besos - 1938Horacio LagosSilvina Tse & Julio AlvarezBAILONGO MONTRÉAL 2024 |
Quién Será - 1941Horacio LagosKei Hasegawa German LandeiraSalón Cannin - 2019 |
Instrumental tangosHigh tempo, playfulness, sometimes alternating with beautifully carried solos by Donato's violin, characterise the following, cheerful tangos, from which a nice tanda can be built, which increases in tempo and reaches its climax in the variation of Pasión criolla: El acomodo (1933), Tierrita (1934), La tablada (1936) and finally Pasion criolla (1939). El distinguido ciudadano (1940) is also very beautiful |
El Acomodo - 1933InstrumentalJonathan Saavedra & Clarisa AragonPermTangoFest-2019 |
El Acomodo - 1933InstrumentalDiego Amorin e Cecilia CapelloDonoratico 2017 |
El distinguido ciudadano - 1940InstrumentalFederico Naveira & SabrinaStockholm 2016 |
Faster vocal tangos of the early thiertiesEl huracán, Qué háces! Qué háces! (beide 1932, Guitiérrez), Hay que acomodarse (1935, Lagos), No te cases (1937, Lagos) Madamme Yvonne (1935, Lagos) |
Madamme Yvonne - 1933Paris - 2024Natacha Lockwood & Andres MolinaMed. Summer Tango Festival 2022 |
Carnaval de mi barrio - 1939Lita Morales y Horacio LagosIvanna Tikhomirova & Salvador Cordoba |
Que haces! Qhe haces! - 1933GutierrezEsteban Moreno y Celine Ruiz Aix-les-Bains-2011 |
Rhythmical, simpler vocal tangos befor 1940
Between 1938 and 1941, Donato created dozens of nice, similar, beautiful, rhythmically playful, but musically simpler tangos compared to the competition, such as, with singer Horacio Lagos, Alas rotas, El adiós (1938), Sinsabor, Sombra gaucha, Chapaleando barro (in duet with Lita Morales, 1939), Deja el mundo como está (1940), Fue mi salvación or A oscuras (1941). Some of them like Rosa, poneme una ventosa (1935, Hugo de Carril, Randona), Gato (1937, Lagos) or Triqui tra (Morales, 1940), do not shy away from the silly. |
El Adiós - 1938LagosJohana Copes and Marcelo MolinaSF Ladys Festival 2016. |
Sin sabor - 1939LagosSilvana Nunez & Ivan RomeroMontréal 2015 |
A Oscuras - 1941LagosMario Consiglieri & Anabella Diaz-HojmanMelbourne 2013 |
Carnaval de mi barrio - 1939Lita Morales y Horacio LagosIvanna Tikhomirova & Salvador Cordoba |
Donatos romantic hits
Donato was and still is a favourite with dancers. One reason for this are the more romantic hits with varied arrangements, which were written in 1940 and are regular guests at our milongas. These include La melodía del corazón (1940, Gavioli), Mi serenta (1940, Gavioli, Morales), Sinfonía de arrabal (1940, Lagos, Morales, Gavioli). The Gardel classic El día que me quieras (1935, Juan Alessio) also fits in well. And anyone who thinks of Chopin when they hear La melodía del corazón is of course right, as this wonderful tango is based on his composition Tristesse (Etude Op. 10 No. 3). |
La melodía del corazón - 1940GavioliClarisa Aragon and Jonathan SaavedraMontpellier 2018 |
Mi serenata - 1940Romeo Gavioli y Lita MoralesFabian Peralta y Virginia PandolfiSeoul 2010 |
Sinfonía de arrabal - 1940Romeo Gavioli y Lita MoralesSagdiana Hamzina and Dmitry VasinBellaria, It, 2019 |
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