The selection of Mr. Masur to lead the Philharmonic astounded nearly everyone in classical music circles. A specialist in the music of Central European composers — notably Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Mahler and Bruckner — he had built a respectable if not scintillating career amid the musical and political repressions of East Germany.

The longtime Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Mr. Masur was known as a faithful — some would say stolid — interpreter who seemed to have neither immense musical charisma nor intense interest in works outside the canonical repertory. (Kapellmeister, literally meaning “master of the chapel,” designates a post that in German-speaking countries is roughly equivalent to that of music director. But among musicians elsewhere, the term can be used derisively.)

“Mr. Masur has stretched on occasion into the 20th century for a late Romantic like Richard Strauss or a moderate modernist like Prokofiev,” the critic Donal Henahan wrote in The New York Times in 1990, after the appointment was announced. “But unless he has a few surprising ideas up his sleeve, Leipzig-on-the-Hudson could be a duller town than Mehtaville.”

In seeking a successor to Mr. Mehta, the Philharmonic had spent a year and a half courting the most eminent conductors of the day, including Bernard Haitink, Sir Colin Davis and Claudio Abbado. But the orchestra’s low standing, and the reputation of its players as temperamental, insubordinate and demoralized, had appeared to deter many candidates. Mr. Abbado, for instance, on the brink of accepting the Philharmonic’s offer, decamped instead to the Berlin Philharmonic, where he succeeded Herbert von Karajan.

Enter Mr. Masur, the darkest of dark horses. A shambolic, bearded giant who stood 6-foot-3 and favored bolo ties offstage, he may have lacked the dynamism of Bernstein and the avant-gardism of Mr. Boulez. But what he could bring to the Philharmonic, the search committee believed, were attributes that were even more urgently needed: the respect of its players, before whom he had appeared as a guest conductor; a deep knowledge of the Germanic repertory that is the foundation stone of the Western symphonic canon; and a tasteful, unswerving fealty to the intent of composers.