Time of the Baroqueniks

Plans called for a Midsummer Music Festival, but New Yorkers have seldom been offered music of such sustained seriousness even in the dead of winter. The programs ranged from La Clemenza di Tito (The Mercy of Titus), a rarely performed opera composed in the last year of Mozart's life, to concerti grossi by Handel, Vivaldi and Samuel Barber, to Bach's B Minor Mass and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms. Skep tics said tickets would go begging. In stead, knowledgeable audiences have kept Philharmonic Hall practically full. The programs' appeal, says Festival Administrator Jay Hoffman, is to the "ba-roquenik -- a music lover with both taste and audacity, some still in college, most between 25 and 35 -- the kind of person who buys the program first and the art ist second, and buys from the top of the house down."

Speech to Our Time. Although he is not wedded to the baroque himself, the hero of the baroqueniks is Festival Conductor Thomas Dunn, 37, who divides his time between his regular duties as organist at Manhattan's Episcopal Church of the Incarnation and such special music projects as this summer's festival and last fall's three sellout per formances of all of Bach's Brandenburg concertos. Says Dunn of the baroque: "The music of that period speaks to our time."

A slim, scholarly bachelor, Dunn has been living with music from the time he could stand up in his crib. To amuse him, his parents put a tall phonograph and a stack of symphony records within reach, and Baby Dunn would change the records. At the age of twelve, he was playing the organ at the regular services at the Third Lutheran Church in Baltimore; at 16, he was conducting the choir at the Episcopal Cathedral. He made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1960 as conductor of the 29-year-old choral society called the Cantata Singers, and his Philharmonic Hall debut with the Festival Orchestra, performing the Brandenburg concertos.

On the podium, Dunn is free of all bravura mannerisms. He conducts with a spare clarity of line that emphasizes the beauty of the music through its style and structure. His approach is that of modesty in the face of genius, seeking out the composer's intent, never willfully imposing his own "interpretation."

Magnetized Talents. Dedicated musicianship of Dunn's caliber attracts talent like a magnet. The warm contralto of the Metropolitan Opera's Lili Chookasian, the glowing mezzo-soprano of Negro Betty Allen, and the responsive, impeccable bowing of Dunn's small string sections all brightened last week's performance of Britten's Rape of Lucretia. Such artists have taught critics and audiences alike that whatever Thomas Dunn tackles musically will be worth doing and done memorably well.

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