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On nights of important debuts, nervous musicians often whisper backstage prayers that the critics, somehow, will fall deaf by curtain time. Last week the critics fell mute instead. New York's newspaper strike (see PRESS) left them effectively silenced, but to the artists who made their debuts, the quiet from critics' row seemed even gloomier than the usual whisper of mighty pencils.

In recital halls, young musicians, faceless behind their cellos, remained nameless, too, with no reviews to account for their work. Even debuts at the Metropolitan Opera or at Carnegie Hall seemed curiously hollow events. Years from now, the performers may well expect cold, unbelieving glances when they explain the empty page in their scrapbooks by saying that there was a newspaper strike that all-important night.

The week's two most important debuts sbTenor Jess Thomas, 35, sang Walther in the Met's production of Die Meistersinger, and should have won a pocketful of raves. In the demanding role, his voice soared in steady flight above the stentorian heaviness of the Wagnerian orchestra: after the ardors of two long acts, he still had a great reservoir of lyric beauty left for the Prize Song that finishes the performance--and finishes the pretensions of a good many tyro tenors with it. A big (6 ft. 3 in.) and muscular South Dakotan, Thomas may well be the Heldentenor grand opera has awaited since Melchior.

His voice is as pure as mountain air. As Walther, he seemed strong and bashful, creating a likable understatement of the part that might have annoyed Wagner but seemed just fine at the Met. Having built toward his Met debut since 1958, when he first appeared with the Baden State Theater in Karlsruhe, Thomas was mildly disappointed by the morning silence that followed his big night. But he has the consolation of two more leading roles at the Met this season (Bacchus in Ariadne and Radames in Aida) plus opera and recording contracts that will keep him busy for two full years.

sbPianist Agustin Anievas, 28, made Carnegie Hall debut with a program ot Mozart. Chopin. Brahms, Liszt and Sessions Anievas won last year's Dimitn Mitropoulos International Music Competition beating out 46 other pianists and earning as part of his prize the S. Hurok-sponsored debut. From a year away, Anievas and Hurok unerringly picked the first week of the strike. "This would be my luck," said Anievas gloomily, "to pick a week when the press is out for lunch. As things turned out, it was probably just as well. Despite his virtuoso technique. Anievas' playing lacked authority and. too often, the ability to express either the sweep of the music or its depth. But on occasion, as in Brahms's Variations on a Theme by Paganini and the singing passages of Sessions' First Sonata, he shed his tall, dark detachment and dug down to bring up the music that had been expected of him.

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