Elena Letňanová

* 1942

  • "In 1972 I received a ban from Slovkoncert, from Dr Palovčík, I was not allowed to perform in public. With that, my destiny was sealed. As a 28-years pianist, I was at the beginning of my career, I was playing internationally, and suddenly I had to be my mouth and hands closed, which was terrible. Actually, it was death for me. Then I had a child, which, fortunately, helped me to overcome that disaster, but I couldn't get to the piano for thirteen years, which was one reason for my escape. The other one was my daughter so that she could see her father, who had also escaped to the West and couldn't return, otherwise he would be arrested. Closed borders are my other big reproach for the Communist Government and all those cowards, who entered this pro-Soviet course and caused normalisation, which was seemingly neutrally called "normalisation", but destroyed lives of so many people, that it simply can't be forgotten."

  • "I still have that ID, I looked so devastated there. There is the exact date when I entered Italy. They put me in a room with a Polish girl, where we slept on straw bags for two months. Those straw bags stung terribly. But the feeling that we were free to escape from that prison, from that catastrophe, was so cleansing that I almost kissed that Italian refugee soil. I was really happy I escaped, to be free. It was an amazing, euphoric feeling. At the same time, you realized that now you are nobody. You mean nothing. You are a young woman, who was nothing, not even a daughter, the biggest treasure. I lost my home, my books, paintings, mother, sister, family and my job. Now you almost don't exist. You are on the verge of becoming dust. You have to survive it somehow and take care of this child because she is not guilty of anything. That was my decision."

  • "I was really looking forward to it. Knazko, Budaj, Zajac, Bútora - all my former friends worked on it, they took the first, most important step. For doing so, they deserve respect and utmost thanks. They didn't have to do it, some cowards could have done it, and they could have fucked up. But the first phase- the deposal- was done. Because of that, I respect them and I won't allow those insignificant people, who were cowards or even joining the Communist Party at that time, and now managed to gain power, to judge them."

  • "It was one of the greatest deeds in my life because it was associated with the character, with human nature. Secondly, it was the immature predecessor of November 1989. There was no Solidarity at that time, we only had the legacy of the Hungarian Revolution from 1956. There was no Gorbachev yet, no Glasnost, not yet Brzezinski, who already in 1985 predicted that this socialist camp would fall apart. And it really happened. Because of that, I claim that it was an immature predecessor. There were people who had the courage to say that the procession for Palach was not only a panychid, not a sign of solidarity with Prague, or with the highest moral deed of Jan Palach, but was at the same time the biggest demonstration against communist power, targeted against specific people."

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    Letňanová Elena

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Panychida for Palach was one of the greatest deeds in my life because it was associated with the character and nature of man

Elena Letňanová during a concert in the American city of Dayton (1989)
Elena Letňanová during a concert in the American city of Dayton (1989)
zdroj: archív E. L.

Elena Letňanová is a successful Slovak pianist, publicist and university teacher. After initial studies at the Faculty of Architecture of the Slovak University of Technology (STU) in the years 1960 - 1962, she decided to study piano at the Academy of Performing Arts (VŠMU) in Bratislava. She continued her two-year postgraduate education at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. Her promising career as a concert pianist was interrupted by a ban on public performances when as a leader of a historical march in honour of Jan Palach, she was blacklisted together with Milan Šimečka, Václav Havel and other dissidents. After briefly working at the Department of Music, Pedagogical Faculty, University of Constantin the Philosopher in Nitra (1968 - 1970), she left under the influence of adverse events in the form of the so-called self-criticism and subsequent cleansing from employment. From 1974 to 1984, she worked at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Bratislava. This happened thanks to the composer Eugen Suchoň, who vouched for her despite not being a member of the party. In 1984, she emigrated to Italy and 8 months later to the USA, where her career resumed. She served as Head of the Department of Keyboard Instruments at the University of Dayton. After 1992, she returned to Slovakia. She currently lives in Bratislava and, in addition to her retirement, actively performs in Slovakia and abroad.