Porn in the parsonage

Peter Phillips, founder and conductor of the early music choir the Tallis Scholars, writes in the Spectator about a concert he gave earlier this month in Moscow, in St Andrew’s Anglican church, not far from the Kremlin:

I was surprised and impressed by the sound, though anyone with even a passing knowledge of Moscow would have known what to expect, since for many years this church was the recording studio of Melodiya. Between 1920 and 1991 the building had been confiscated, and it was really only as a result of a visit to Moscow by the Queen in 1994 that Yeltsin gave permission for services to take place again — once a fortnight on Sundays. Melodiya, with contacts all over the political landscape, took a lot of removing, a task which was only completed by the present incumbent, Canon Simon Stephens, in 2006. Before that, services had had to share the space with recording booms in the church and pile upon pile of old black vinyls blocking up all the entrances and porches: no doubt a dream situation for any collector of rare discs. But what had started the hand-back of the buildings in the Anglican compound was Yeltsin’s apparent disquiet at the use to which the Soviets had put the adjoining parsonage: housing a printing press churning out pornography for the politburo. There was a concern that the Queen, whose visit was already planned, might not like it.