Yuri Sergeevich Sakhnovsky (Юрий Сергеевич 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 Vasilevitch Smolensky, to whom Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

 dedicated his Vespers, though Sakhnovsky later turned to a more "lush" style of choral writing. While a student Sakhnovsky took in his 8-year younger fellow student Rachmaninoff during the difficult winter when it seemed he was suffering from malaria.

In later life Sakhnovsky was active more as a critic than a composer. Particularly notorious were his attacks on Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Scriabin

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...

's music as "decadent" from 1911-1914.

His song "The Blacksmith" was recorded by Maxim Mikhailov

Maxim Mikhailov

Maxim Dormidontovich Mikhailov Максим Дормидонтович Михайлов was a Russian bass.His son, Igor Mikhailov was the bass of the Bolshoi for several decades...

 and his song "The Clock" was recorded by Vladimir Rosing

Vladimir Rosing

Vladimir Sergeyevich Rosing , aka Val Rosing, was a Russian-born operatic tenor and stage director who spent most of his professional career in England and the United States...

.