To that illustrious list, music director Wolfgang Sawallisch will add the Eighth Symphony (subtitled "The Journey") by renowned Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara.
"My titles don't tell so much about the music, they are better than just 'Symphony Number 8,' " Rautavaara said, laughing.
"It means simply a journey to human life, mine or anyone else's."
The prolific Scandinavian master of mood has written many works with evocative titles like the ravishingly beautiful "Angel of Light," "Isle of Bliss" and "Cantus Arcticus" (a concerto for Lapland bird sounds and orchestra), but it's not his intention to be descriptive.
"My music almost always gets its first impetus from another source, from which I can be inspired to develop an atmosphere.
"It's often from a poem I read, or from two words - like my 'Fire Sermon,' words which were full of energy without a story, pictures or images.
"The symphony opens peacefully and proceeds in long sweeps, with a signature theme from low registers, a technically demanding scherzo and, though all my large-scale works have ended in silence, this one wanted to end grandly."
The work will also be performed in Helsinki, where Rautavaara is revered, during the orchestra's upcoming European tour in late May.
On its first trip there, in 1955, Eugene Ormandy and some of his musicians met the Finnish master Jan Sibelius, who chose Rautavaara in 1955 to receive a grant which altered his life.
"Sibelius was a kind of monument as well as a mystical figure because, though he lived in a house outside of Helsinki, no one ever saw him," said Rautavaara.
"I was in Vienna studying and I received this telegram - I still have it - and I went back to Helsinki and met him.
