Something clever on radio 3 and something dumb on tv !

Shouldn't that font size have been bigger? 

I used the small one to indicate my embarrassment and to distance myself from my own childish comment...

Ho, Opilec!   Good to see you with us!

Frankly you are the musicologist - I gave all that up for Lent many years ago   I am guessing when I say that I strongly doubt there's textual evidence for a choral version, either extant or hinted-at in any of PIT's correspondence...  on the basis that if there was, it would have been done in Russia.  I suspect this might be a "wouldn't it be a great idea if...?",  rather on the lines of that "Tchaikovsky's Cello Concerto" assembled out of oddments and fragments by a composer who also happened - well goodness gracious me - to be an aspirant solo cellist.   On the other hand,  Jaarvi's background might imply that in fact there is "something in it"?

PIT was no purist on these matters himself, and was quite happy to make modified versions of his works - such as the "concert version" of "The Battle Of Poltava" - but usually with the proviso that he did so himself.  For example there is the case I mentioned back in "another place", in which the ballerina for a revival of his initially-unsuccessful SWAN LAKE had Minkus knock-up a replacement Pas De Deux (for new choreography by Petipa) in place of Tchaikovsky's Pas De Six. PIT went ballistic and refused to allow the piece into his ballet... then offered a compromise, in which he would compose alternative music that would perfectly fit the choreography. In point of fact he simply took Minkus's melody and scored it slightly different.  (In fact, neither version made it into the 1896 "Drigo" edition which is universally danced today).

Does anyone else know about this "Choral Version"?   The sad thing here is that there are so many occasional works by Tchaikovsky which DID employ a chorus and orchestra,  and badly deserve performance.  For example, his Cantata to celebrate the opening of the Moscow Polytechnical Museum,  which is a substantial "patriotic" work  (there was a vogue for such pieces after the assassination of Alexander II in 1883 - his heir was convinced it had all happened because of opening up the borders to corrupting foreign influences, plus ca change, eh?).   As far as I remember there are alternating solos and choruses,  telling Russia's history in panoramic form, by way of the Mongols, the Turks, the Empire and a tangential sideswipe at Napoleon 

Ho Reiner.  There are two cantatas listed in the Radio Times.  On Sunday 10th at 9'45 plus is the Cantata "To Joy".  On Wednesday 14th at 10'30 plus is the Cantata "On the Bicentenary of the Birth of Peter the Great.  I assume the former is the one that you have mentioned.
Cheers

R_T and Opilec, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1812_Overture has this:

"In the mid-1960s, Igor Buketoff wrote an arrangement of the 1812 Overture with chorus. The opening segment was sung by voices as a sung chant instead of being played by cellos and violas, the children's chorus was added to the flute and English horn parts, and the full chorus was mixed into the winds — the entire orchestra, in fact — in the closing segment."

I agree - or perhaps a themed weekend on a period, a school or something similar.  Something that allows the unfamiliar to be explored and placed in context, alongside the familiar.  But not, please, a week-long marathon like this.