Muti named Chicago Symphony's music director

CHICAGO — Outside Orchestra Hall, posters in display cases breathlessly exclaimed, "Benvenuto Maestro!"

Inside the hall, Riccardo Muti held his first news conference in the city since being named the 10th music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The media meet-and-greet was sandwiched between a dinner with CSO board members and a lunch with orchestra musicians.

The charismatic Italian conductor, 66, submitted to these nonmusical duties with charm, warmth and modesty, not to mention a good deal more patience than you would expect from one of the senior eminences of the music world who has addressed gatherings far more august than this.

Speaking in the lilting cadences of his native Naples, Muti sounded like a practiced Chicago politician as he praised the great orchestra he inherited last month, as well as the musical community and city he clearly is eager to get to know better.

Along the way, the maestro cracked self-deprecating jokes of the sort you would never associate with the strong-willed former music director of Milan's Teatro alla Scala whom some employees once branded a tyrant.

He deftly defused a ticklish inquiry about his stormy departure from the famed opera house in 2005. Prior to his resignation, Muti calmly observed, the theater's 100 ushers took a no-confidence vote against him. "I understand ushers can be very musical, but ...," he quipped, letting the thought trail off into general laughter.

A self-confessed "simple man, essentially a southern Italian peasant," he said he didn't own an iPod and that, until just the other day, thought iPod was the name of a racehorse. (A CSO publicist later made a point of presenting him one as a gift.)

So began a victory march that will bring Muti to Chicago in an official capacity in September 2010, when he will launch the first season of his five-year contract. As music director-designate, he will conduct three performances of the Verdi Requiem next January as well as two weeks of subscription concerts during the 2009-10 season.

Yet to be determined is how a European-trained music director of Muti's strong ideas and temperament will fit in with the recent programming and marketing initiatives of Deborah R. Card's administration. It's no secret that Card, the CSO association president, and Daniel Barenboim were at loggerheads over these and other issues toward the end of the latter's CSO tenure, which ended in 2006.

Are there points of potential conflict between Muti and Card as well? I put the question to Card, whose zealous courtship of the former Scala chief over a three-year period was crucial in clinching the deal.