AT 73, FOSS PREPARES TO RUN ANOTHER MARATHON.

Byline: Donna Perlmutter Special to the Daily News

If you think Dustin Hoffman is the only Marathon Man, guess again. Try conductor Lukas Foss, who, after nearly a decade, returns Saturday to the scene of the crime, the Hollywood Bowl, to revive his self-styled epic commonly known as, yes, the marathon.

It was back in the '70s that the tireless champion of music began regaling audiences with these extravaganzas - leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic in no fewer than 13 of them and never complaining about the heavy workload of each five-hour orgy. The last marathon - which offers festival seating that allows concertgoers to come and go throughout the evening - was in 1987.

On Saturday, chamber music will fill the bill when Foss and the L.A. Phil are not on stage. The Los Angeles Master Chorale and several soloists also are set to appear.

``The whole idea,'' Foss said on the phone from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he's taking part in the Pablo Casals Festival, ``was to lure 20-somethings to symphony concerts and prove that we could be `a happening,' too, not just the same old format of overture-concerto-symphony, over and out.''

Foss, who by any reasonable assessment would seem too busy with more important things to play Pied Piper, truly loves the idea of turning people on. Never mind that he is considered one of the great composers of our time, that the New York Philharmonic recently celebrated his 50-year contribution to music during a week of Fossiana or that he teaches at such institutions as Harvard and Yale (and succeeded Arnold Schoenberg at UCLA as composer-in-residence), conducts orchestras everywhere and performs as pianist when there's time.

He doesn't beg off celebrating the Hollywood Bowl's 75th anniversary season with a marathon, which managing director Ernest Fleischmann proposed to him as a ``Marathon of Marathons.'' Nothing precious emanates from Foss because he's too involved in ``doing'' music to care about whether it generates prestige or advances a particular cause.

But how does he continue to be so upbeat, so perpetually young (for a 73-year-old)?

``Maybe it's because I love what I do - be it conducting, composing or performing. That love prompts curiosity,'' said Foss, who lives in New York. ``Curiosity leads to learning and discovery. And these run counter to image-building, which is a static, singular thing. I prefer to be a student, not an image-builder. People who are career-conscious and pay attention to getting on the next rung of the ladder are the ones who tend to be downers.''

Surely no other composer today has done such a good job of learning as Foss. His works embrace every conceivable style from Stravinskyan neo-classicism to contemporary Americana to cerebral serialism and improvisatory chance to postmodern eclectic. There was even a time when some charged him with being a copycat. But the virtuosic musician whose career closely shadows that of Leonard Bernstein always found his own way of reconceiving the various genres he experimented with - so the criticism does not stick.

Unlike Bernstein, Foss didn't write a popular hit such as ``West Side Story,'' never reigned as music director of the New York Philharmonic (but instead led such orchestras as the Brooklyn Philharmonic) and wasn't a flamboyant exhibitionist. Otherwise he has all the same gifts - even greater ones, say many.

Wit and charm are not the least of them, as Saturday's Bowl audience will discover. Foss always has a few choice words about the music being performed, with the accent on enlightenment, not self-glory.

``I remember once, during a Mozart marathon, trying to find something young adults could relate to and coming up with a remark Haydn made while listening to a `Figaro' performance: `Isn't it terrible to think,' he said, `that Mozart doesn't have a job?' Then I explained to our incipient lovers of classical music that Mozart was the first unemployed composer.

``If those in the crowd weren't already in the same boat, they could expect to be sometime or other. This was my way of making Mozart, whose music they'd probably been conditioned to regard as grandmother's, relevant to them.''

THE FACTS The show: ``Marathon of Marathons.''

Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood.

When: 6 p.m. to midnight Saturday.

Program: Music by Bach, Vivaldi, Stravinsky, Mozart, Ives, Poulenc, Beethoven and Foss.

Tickets: Festival seating is available for patrons to come and go. Bench seats are $10 and box seats are $40. Shuttle service is available throughout the evening. Call Ticketmaster at [phone].

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Photo

Photo: Lukas Foss conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic aspart of a music marathon at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday.