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THE POINT IS MUTI The 67-year-old old-school wand-waver professes to have no computer or iPod.

The proverbial “second coming” of Riccardo Muti, the Chicago Symphony’s music director designate, is not until September 2010, when his tenure officially begins, so consider the renowned maestro’s first appearance this week a sneak preview.

The CSO’s announcement of the Italian’s appointment in May took the music world by storm. Muti rejected other offers to be a music director again after heading the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1974 to 1991 and his 19-year reign at La Scala (1986–2005). It was a coup for Chicago, stealing the Naples native from the arms of the New York Philharmonic, where he already had agreed to be principal guest conductor.

The orchestra’s capture of the elusive and seemingly unavailable Muti is a tale combining canny strategy and derring-do by CSO president Deborah Rutter. Muti’s signing capped a four-year search that began shortly after Daniel Barenboim’s decision to relinquish his post in 2004. A 16-member search committee was formed from six musicians, six trustees, three CSO staff members, including Rutter, and chairman William Strong.

The CSO committee operated its search for its dream leader with no timeline and no rigid job description, only a wish list of general qualities with one paramount goal—musical compatibility with the orchestra. “It had to be someone who put Chicago at the top of the list of whatever else they were doing,” Rutter says.

The think tank spent the first year soliciting suggestions from musicians, donors, subscribers and trustees, and just jelling as a working group. This marked the first time musicians sat at the selection table; oboist Michael Henoch notes the team was “navigating in uncharted waters.” Meanwhile, Rutter checked in with conductors and artist managers around the world for possible names and engaged guest conductors to test drive the orchestra.

The initial list contained more than 50 candidates, including likely hopefuls such as Bernard Haitink, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Leonard Slatkin, David Robertson and two Riccardos—Muti and Chailly. Rutter and Strong punched their passports in all the major music capitals—Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Stockholm, Vienna and New York—observing candidates in live performance.

Rutter’s avid courtship of Muti began in early 2005, when she signed him to conduct the opening two weeks of the 2007–08 season with the added sweetener of a seven-city European tour of Italy, Austria and England. But by 2006, the committee was still unprepared to anoint anyone.

Lack of interest wasn’t the problem. “It’s like searching for a future mate. You take it very seriously,” Rutter says. “And we’re a very attractive mate.” According to Henoch, the selection committee polled CSO players four or five times on their choices for guest conductors and rated them after appearances. Rutter bought additional time for the search in April 2006, when Haitink agreed to become principal conductor through the 2009–10 season.

Muti’s 2007 appearance in Chicago (he last appeared here in 1975) and his subsequent two-week tour was a love fest between conductor and CSO. Within a few downbeats, Henoch says, the musicians sensed they had found their man, with Muti’s mastery of the scores and his nuanced physical expression. “[Top conductors] don’t have to speak English. The best convey it with their gestures,” Henoch says.

After signing a five-year contract for ten weeks of concerts in Chicago plus all international tours, Muti told Rutter, “I want to serve the community and bring music to the people of Chicago.” Clearly, Muti wants to cap his career and his legacy with a note of triumph rather than let his dismissal from La Scala four years ago cloud his lifetime achievement. Muti sustained a vote of no confidence from the orchestra members after years of feuding that culminated in his perceived engineering of a hostile general manager’s ouster in favor of one more to his liking.

Regardless of the Italian intrigues, Henoch’s reaction to Muti’s signing was ecstasy: “Not one musician was even slightly critical,” he says, “which may be a first for an orchestra.”