Just as 9/11 prompted a wave of commemorative works, so is the Russian invasion of Ukraine now doing. Lewis Spratlan’s Invasion is a raucous, volatile tone poem for a sextet of piano, saxophone, horn, trombone, percussion and – I assume to provide some local Ukrainian colour – mandolin, written at speed in March this year. Spratlan and pianist Nadia Shpachenko were already planning a new album to follow up her Grammy Award-winning ‘The Poetry of Places’, which featured Spratlan’s Bangladesh, when events overtook it. Invasion is the music of indignation and outrage, its combative nature (it does have a more contemplative central section) mirrored in the scoring, with broadsides of drums, brass fanfares, and the maniacal presence of the mandolin which, with the piano, seems to indicate a human presence amid the mechanistic carnage. The performance is powerful, in a rather airless recording, the booklet illustrated sumptuously with full-colour paintings by Ukrainian artists Shpachenko commissioned and by children in her battered home city of Kharkiv.

The album is a programme of two halves, however: the larger part (Invasion is the opening track) is a succession of recent compositions – all predating the war – for piano solo by Spratlan that cover a wide variety of expression. Perhaps the most successful are the Suite No 1 (2021) – a succinct triptych of frantic Capriccio, mournful Dirge (very adroitly constructed) and a ‘whimsical’ Pastorale – and the Six Rags (2018), multifaceted miniatures inspired by mountains and lakes around New England; Spratlan avoids the temptation to go into full Ives mode in what is a very enjoyable set. Two Sonatas (2021) are Scarlattiesque essays that confound expectations by having the Presto first invade – presciently – the Gentle second, which finally repulses it. Largest of all is the earliest work, written for Jonathan Biss, Wonderer (2005), in which the titular character traverses an at times nightmarish landscape that could easily be the by-product of war.

Shpachenko audibly has a deep understanding of Spratlan’s compositional processes, and – in writing all bar Wonderer for her – he clearly has an appreciation of her pianistic abilities. The whole album may not be the sum of its parts, its expressive diversity at times bafflingly wide, but each individual part is impressive, and mostly haunting. All proceeds will go to Ukraine humanitarian aid programmes.