Margaret Fingerhut has devoted much of her music-making towards supporting charitable causes in recent years, including a major 2019 recital tour to generate funds supporting refugees and asylum seekers. The Russian invasion of Ukraine provided the impetus for Fingerhut to explore her own Ukrainian heritage by putting together an evocatively beautiful and intelligently curated recital of piano works by a broad range of Ukrainian composers.

One could hardly find a more appropriate opening salvo than Sergey Bortkiewicz’s Les Rochers d’Outche-Coche, where darkness and despair intermingle with power and resilience – qualities that characterise Fingerhut’s intense and full-bodied interpretation. Three achingly inflected readings of short pieces by Vasyl Barvinsky are next. Although Fingerhut rightfully describes Mykola Lysenko’s Rhapsody on Ukrainian Themes No 2 (Dumka-Shumka) as fun and light-hearted, a wistful subtext informs her myriad holdbacks and tenutos.

Three of Levko Revutsky’s Op 4 Preludes evoke the spirits of Rachmaninov and Scriabin, as do his Improvisation and Viktor Kosenko’s Nocturne-fantaisie. Fingerhut’s caring eloquence in these works extends to the simplicity and beauty that she brings to Silvestrov’s Three Bagatelles. While Boris Lyatoshinsky’s Two Preludes on the Melodies of Ukrainian Folk Songs demand and receive poetic bravura, the Elegy-Prelude’s desolate soundscape needs no further comment. However, Fingerhut decides to conclude the recital with a glimmer of hope, circling back to Bortkiewicz’s romanticism and the lyrical sweetness of his ‘Consolation’, Op 17 No 4.

In addition to Fingerhut’s exemplary pianism and programme-building, those who purchase this superbly engineered and annotated release will be supporting a worthy cause, since proceeds from it are designated to raise money for emergency vehicles in Ukraine.