Former Soprano Finds Voice on Podium

Prancing on a makeshift podium, an energetic woman in a black jumpsuit leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute Orchestra through a rehearsal of Act IV of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro.” Conductor Susan Davenny Wyner encourages her young charges with a wink, a smile or by telling yet another tale of operatic lore.

Hard to believe that a few years ago Wyner’s life was in shards. A renowned soprano soloist, Wyner was forced to abandon her career following a traffic accident that caused her severe head, neck and back injuries and left her in excruciating pain, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Yet these days, in a hard-fought career move, Wyner is carving a niche as a conductor of choral and chamber ensembles.

“I feel very fortunate,” she says, “even in the throes of losing something, to still be able to find this enormous joy.”

Selected from a field of 80 as a conducting fellow with the Philharmonic Institute, Wyner will lead the Institute Orchestra in the Second Suite from Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloe” Sunday night at Hollywood Bowl. She will return to Cahuenga Pass Aug. 18 to conduct the Third Meditation, scored for cello and orchestra, from Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass.” (Simon Rattle leads the second half of the program, conducting Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.)

Lynn Harrell, Institute artistic director, believes Wyner stands out because of “what she has inside as an artist.” The widely respected cellist explains: “As a singer she understands the breadth, the expression of drama and how to use the voice to communicate and this is where she is tops.”

Wyner was graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in English literature and music. Appearing in concert with major orchestras across the nation, Wyner made her New York City Opera debut in the title role of “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” in 1977, and four years later appeared with the Metropolitan Opera as Woglinde in “Das Rheingold.” Twelve summers ago, Wyner was the soprano soloist at Hollywood Bowl in Bach’s B-minor Mass and Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis.”

Then came that awful day in 1983 when Wyner, riding her bicycle in New York City, was struck by a hit-and-run driver. As Wyner tells it, she was in great pain for six years. But the hardest of all was realizing, slowly, painfully, that because of the “damage to the musculature in the throat,” she could no longer sing. (Her speaking voice is not affected today.)

“It was a painful two years, really quasi-suicidal,” Wyner recalls. “I mean my soul was taken away.

“I went with all good faith into trying to retrain my voice and did get to make it back on stage. But there was damage that simply did not recuperate and heal.

“I went very private about the accident. It was very difficult to be in New York and around colleagues. Being around music was so painful because it was a world that could no longer exist for me. The need to express myself was so powerful. But there was a stubbornness that I believed I could get it back. That carried me through.”

Ultimately, it was a year spent in Italy, away from the New York music scene, that Wyner believes began the recuperative process.

“I learned in Italy to live again,” Wyner remembers. “I studied photography and Italian and began allowing myself to be Susan who no longer had her soul as a singer. I was simply learning to live again without music. Studying Italian in a small Tuscan village gave me a new awareness of myself. The simplest conversation became an adventure. It awoke the child in me; that trust and that sense of wonder. Certain worlds that no longer existed on one level for me, began to exist on another.”

Wyner’s return to the music world began when she was invited by her alma mater, Cornell University, to teach voice and direct the Cornell women’s chorus.

“As soon as I got in front of a group of people this passion poured out of me,” Wyner recalls. “I was able to keep my personal grief separate from the teaching. When I got involved in conducting the thrill of live music again was incredible.”

Encouraged by her composer-pianist husband, Yehudi Wyner, the aspiring conductor attended seminars at Aspen and Tanglewood.

Also a trained violinist, Wyner acknowledges that there is much to be learned for any musician making the transition to the podium.

“As a conductor you have no instrument until (you stand) in front of a group of people,” Wyner explains. “All the gestures you rehearse alone and think about you find out don’t make any sense.

“There are many things I know from having watched rehearsals and worked with great conductors as a singer. As a singer I used different colors and with a great orchestra you could hear them in turn coloring and responding. That’s what I want to be able to do in conducting. But in this craft I am a newcomer.”

Free at last from physical pain--she believes her early training in modern dance with Martha Graham blessed her with a strong physique--Wyner last December led Margaret Hillis’ Chicago Symphony chorus in a sing-along “Messiah.” In the fall she will conduct four concerts with the large and chamber choruses of the Cleveland Institute of Music. Next spring, she will take over the choral program at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

Of her new direction, Wyner philosophizes: “It may be that when one faces a life-and-death situation like I did, that fear is simply wiped out.

“Every performer gets nervous, but it’s no longer the same when one realizes life can stop just like that.”