When the Berlin Philharmonic announced on Monday that its next chief conductor would be Kirill Petrenko, the Russian-born music director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the organization was awarding one of the most prestigious posts in classical music to a widely respected artist who has largely shunned the spotlight courted by some of his peers.

Case in point: Mr. Petrenko, 43, is in the midst of rehearsals at the Bayreuth Festival and so did not attend the hastily arranged news conference in Berlin, where his appointment was announced a day after the musicians of the Philharmonic, a self-governing orchestra, met in secret near their concert hall. There they elected him the latest in a line of distinguished leaders that has included Hans von Bülow, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado and the current conductor, Simon Rattle.

It was not the musicians’ first attempt to choose a successor to Mr. Rattle, who will leave the post in 2018: At a marathon 11-hour meeting in May, the musicians cast several ballots but failed to agree on a candidate, raising questions about the role of modern conductors, and what course the Berlin Philharmonic intends to chart in the 21st century.

In choosing Mr. Petrenko, who is best known as an opera conductor, the Philharmonic’s players bypassed a number of more famous maestros and opted for a quiet, diligent musician who has won the admiration of orchestras, critics and audiences. In some ways he is the opposite of the jet-setters who have increasingly become the norm in the field, arranging his schedule in recent years to devote more of his time to fewer ensembles.

“The orchestra and the score itself are always the focus — not his own person,” Peter Riegelbauer, one of the musicians on the orchestra’s board, said at the news conference. But he added, “He is always able to transform a concert hall with his unique charisma.”

There are risks to the appointment. Few couples would marry after only three dates, no matter how great, and Mr. Petrenko has conducted the Philharmonic only three times. In December he withdrew on short notice because of shoulder pain from a fourth engagement to conduct Mahler’s Sixth Symphony.

That Mahler was to have been his first foray into the standard symphonic literature with the orchestra, a reminder that Mr. Petrenko’s orchestral repertoire is not as wide as that of some other candidates. And his seeming reticence — he declined to be interviewed on Monday — could pose a challenge for an international orchestra that valued Mr. Rattle’s ability to talk about its art with audiences and the news media alike.

But Mr. Petrenko has won fans wherever he has conducted, and has become known for his exacting standards. His work at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich has been praised, and officials there said on Monday that they still hoped to extend his contract beyond 2018. (The Berlin orchestra declined to give Mr. Petrenko’s official start date, suggesting that details of the new engagement had yet to be negotiated.)

He received acclaim for his earlier run as music director of the Komische Oper in Berlin, as well as engagements with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra and other ensembles. In 2012 he led a production of Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” at the Metropolitan Opera that was a highlight of the season. And in 2013, his conducting of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle at Bayreuth was applauded, even if the production was not.

Mr. Petrenko was born in Omsk in Siberia and immigrated at the age of 18 with his family to Austria, where his father, a violinist, got a post with a provincial orchestra. In a statement, Mr. Petrenko admitted to a certain disbelief at being selected by the Berlin Philharmonic.

“Words cannot express my feelings — everything from euphoria and great joy to awe and disbelief,” he said. “I am aware of the responsibility and high expectations of me, and I will do everything in my power to be a worthy conductor of this outstanding orchestra.”

The orchestra was said to have weighed numerous candidates, including the German conductor Christian Thielemann, a polarizing figure with fans and detractors among the players; Andris Nelsons; and Riccardo Chailly. A number of other top candidates seemed to withdraw from consideration in the weeks before the first vote, including Gustavo Dudamel, Daniel Barenboim and Mariss Jansons.

Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, called Mr. Petrenko an “inspired choice,” and said that he hoped the new position might make a return engagement at the Met more likely for Mr. Petrenko. He also said he considered the conductor a noteworthy choice for Berlin, an orchestra with complicated dynamics that can seem to require deft political leadership. “It’s interesting that they picked somebody who is clearly not interested in politics,” he said.

Sarah Willis, a horn player in the Philharmonic, said that the musicians were quickly drawn to Mr. Petrenko after he made his debut in 2006 conducting works by Bartok and Rachmaninoff. When she interviewed him for one of the orchestra’s Digital Concert Hall streaming service programs in 2009, she told him as much. “It’s usually a question for the orchestra: ‘Hmm, we’ll see if this new conductor will be asked back,’ ” she told him. “But by the end of the week we were saying, ‘When can he come back?’ because we enjoyed it so much.”

In that interview Mr. Petrenko confessed to having been “very shy” in his first rehearsal with the orchestra: “I was thinking: ‘What should I say? Should I ask them to play this one more time? Or better not ask them?’ ” For his second engagement, he said, he decided to “work with this great orchestra as I work with any other orchestra, just in my way.”

Ms. Willis, in a telephone interview, said: “One of my colleagues likened it to playing chamber music. When you play chamber music with someone you notice in the very first seconds, almost, if you’ll be able to play with that person. If they think like you do, if they feel like you do, it just clicks.”

Alison Smale contributed reporting from Berlin.