TT: The smiling genius

In recent weeks I’ve been posting videos of performances of the music of Emmanuel Chabrier, a composer who is infrequently performed and insufficiently appreciated in this country, I suspect in part because his music is too pleasurable for prigs to take seriously. In the interests of heightening Chabrier consciousness in America, I’ve now written a “Sightings” column for Saturday’s Wall Street Journal in which I argue that he was in fact an important composer–but one who is underrated because his genius was essentially comic.
If you share my passion for Chabrier’s music, pick up a copy of Saturday’s Journal and see what I have to say. If not, take a look at the video posted below. Should it fail to lift your heart, you might want to consider a transplant.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.
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Georges Prêtre and the Vienna Philharmonic perform Chabrier’s España:

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A reader writes to tell me something I didn’t know, which is that in 1956, the year of my birth, Perry Como recorded a novelty song called “Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom)” which is, amazingly enough, based on España. I must have heard the record as a child, but I’d completely forgotten it until today.
Here’s a kinescope of one of Como’s TV shows in which he performs “Hot Diggity”: