Absolute Classics

Beethoven famously wrote nine Symphonies, each of them ground-breaking and interesting listening, though (as it happens) the odd-numbered ones are, on the whole, possibly the more remarkable. Which of them has furnished the European Anthem?

Working in reverse order, no.9 in the Hall of Fame is a choral work associated with Ash Wednesday in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel: Allegri's sublime Miserere mei Deus. Which of the following is NOT regarded as being true of this piece?

We are back with Beethoven again: one of only two composers each having more than one entry in the Top Ten (we will meet his companion a little later). This is another of his Symphonies, this time No.6 in F major, his op.68. By what programmatic subtitle is it more widely known?

Your author has to confess at this point that the next entry in the Hall of Fame, despite it having been there for three years, would otherwise have completely passed him by, belonging to so modern a genre that it would not have sprung to his mind as a potential classic in any traditional sense. However ...
This is a track from 'the Beethoven of video games' (we are pinching ourselves here ... ) by the name of ... ?

We have arrived comfortably back at Elgar and his Enigma Variations (of which there are 14: a possible cultural nod to the 14 Stations of the Cross, what with his Catholic upbringing?); specifically the serene Nimrod. This seems a strange name, doesn't it, even within the context of a somewhat crypticised set of musical portraits of the composer's friends?
What is the significance of 'Nimrod', as a name or title?

You were perhaps beginning to wonder where Mozart had got to in such generally illustrious and familiar company. No.5 in the rankings is his concerto in A major, K.622 for an instrument which, in this more-or-less modern form, had existed only for a couple of generations or so by the time he wrote the piece: he regarded it as being more able than any other to express human thoughts without actual words. Which instrument is this?

Well, we didn't give this away earlier ... but here's Beethoven back yet again, for a 3rd entry in the Top Ten. Anyone suspecting that 'classical music' as such tends to be dominated by 'dead white male Germans' is probably right ~ though let's not discriminate on demographic grounds, but rather, applaud their work on its undoubted and enduring merit.
And it's another concerto, this time for the Piano: his Opus 73 in E♭ major, The Emperor (not his own original title for it, apparently; though one could quite have understood had he coined it himself).
How many other piano concertos had he written before producing this one?

Two of the top three spots are reserved for that colossus of 20th-century British music, Ralph Vaughan Williams. We may approach this next work of his through a parallel with Benjamin Britten, a generation or so later: Britten shared a birthday (on the feast-day of Saint Cecilia, patroness of music ~ which could hardly be more indicative or auspicious) with the earlier composer Henry Purcell, and he (Britten) drew his own influences and inspirations both from such early British music and also from traditional folksongs that were still being sung in his own lifetime. 'RVW' had in many salient ways done the same.
In 1910 VW produced one of his major works which, from its presence in this list, has obviously found a popular resonance over the intervening century, even with all that period's other musical innovation and historical ups-&-downs. It openly drew its inspiration from an earlier composer, as its title acknowledges: Fantasia on a Theme by ... (?)

You might be surprised that the Top Ten appears somehow to have bypassed All Those Russians (actually, they have a fairly plentiful representation not too much further down the ranks): 'wot no Tchaikovsky?', you may have wondered. Perhaps Tchaikovsky's star is temporarily on the wane for some reason.
Anyhow, 'No.2 is No.2' (for reasons you will shortly see) and it is resolutely in the minor mode, in this case of the key of C. One might also have expected the uppermost works all to be in the sunnier, major mode ... but definitely not this one. Rachmaninov's seething Piano Concerto No.2 has an almost visceral and perhaps cathartic appeal for anyone who has found themself in turmoil, privately and/or perhaps in troubled times (such as wartime). Apparently this piece was 'absolute tops' in the previous year's listings.
It was written in 1900 but enjoyed enormous, if somewhat improbable, popularity forty-odd years later when used as the soundtrack for a film about a romance-that-hardly-ever-was ~ between two professional people (each married to someone else) whose paths crossed on a provincial railway station 'somewhere in England' in the shadow of the Second World War.
What was the title of the film?

Right, folks, tea-break over (or not ... ) : it's time for No.1, appropriately a centennial track as this Quiz is drafted in 2014. This piece is another of RVW's, a genuine classic evocation of the English landscape, and, as such, a bittersweet reminder of that innocence which was ~ all too imminently ~ to be shattered on the otherwise similar fields of Flanders and elsewhere. It features a solo violin and orchestra. What is the title of the piece?