41 (Trois Chansons Russes; Tri Russkie Pesni) for chorus and orchestra (also seen as Three Russian Folk Songs) were written by Sergei Rachmaninoff in 1926.
It seems likely that the choir for the first three performances was augmented by local Russian Orthodox priests who could reach the bass notes required by Rachmaninoff.
The conductor Igor Buketoff recalled that he attended the rehearsals as an eleven-year-old boy in the company of his father, a priest and a friend of Rachmaninoff's.
When Buketoff himself programmed the piece some years later as a choral conductor at the Juilliard School, he approached Rachmaninoff for advice as to the exact tempo he had envisaged.
[5] The Three Russian Songs have been recorded several times, including by Leopold Stokowski himself, Igor Buketoff, Charles Dutoit and Yevgeny Svetlanov.