is it possible for the song name, as seen in the playlist, be different from the song title in the tag?

If by "tag" you mean the empeg database entry associated with that song, then no. The song name as seen in the playlist -IS- the song title, they are one and the same thing.

You could work around it by making hierarchical playlists with each song in its own playlist. Then the song title could be different than the playlist which housed the song. Sounds a bit too cumbersome for my tastes, though.

You're not the only person to discover that the title/artist/album layout isn't very well suited to classical music. Ask Doug Burnside how he handles it, he even uses V1 tags (30 chars) and he's come to grips with it.