Napoleon watches Moscow burning in 1812. (Painting by Adam Albrecht, 1840)

I am still suffering from Tchaikovsky’s Retreat from Providence.

Last year the Rhode Island Philharmonic gave a bravura performance of “The 1812 Overture” for the city’s Fourth of July celebration at India Point Park. Not this year. I have no idea who is to blame – Mayor Elorza or the orchestra? Was there an inability to come to terms? Or was it somehow determined, at City Hall, that the Overture would be too old hat? Tradition has worked well in Bristol. Is it to be ditched in Providence?

Here is a full choral version of the Overture played by the Leningrad Military Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the St. Petersburg Chamber Choir, Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting. The YouTube video does not provide the date of the performance, but it is unlikely to have been on our Independence Day, not if the recording was made in St. Petersburg. Anyhow, what does the piece even have to do with our Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776? The War of 1812 might be found among the rationale, but that was a sideshow during the Napoleonic Wars between France and a major but shifting coalition of allies alternately led by Britain and czarist Russia. France was our ally in the Revolution, but it was France whose retreat from Moscow was celebrated by Tchaikovsky. Perhaps it is merely his inclusion of the melody of France’s national anthem, “The Marseilles,” in the piece that caused Arthur Fiedler to place it on the program for a July 4, 1974, performance of the Boston Pops in the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade. I probably saw it, since I was in Boston shrugging off Emerson that summer. It became a traditional part of American fireworks displays only after that, a mere 42 years ago – a time when the idea of a victorious Russia was anathema to many Americans.

Go figure! No, go listen!

Hearing that the Philharmonic would not be present at India Point Park, I retreated this year. But, as they say, there’s always next year. Let’s hope.