Yuri Sergeevich Sakhnovsky (Russian: Юрий Серге́евич Сахновский) (1866–1930) was a Russian composer, conductor and music critic. Sakhnovsky came from a well-off family and was known as a "bon vivant (he weighed 260.lbs) handsome, brilliant and wealthy". Sakhnovsky studied chant with Stepan Vasilevich Smolensky, to whom Sergei Rachmaninoff dedicated his Vespers, though Sakhnovsky later turned to a more "lush" style of choral writing. While a student Sakhnovsky took in his eight-year younger fellow student Rachmaninoff during the difficult winter when it seemed he was suffering from malaria.