Emma Johnson and John Lenehan

Copland/Bernstein/Dankworth

Naxos

Rating: 3/5

Other than re-releases of original ASV recordings and an innocuous compilation disc in 2004, Emma Johnson's recording profile was on a seeming one-way street. But this recital constitutes a most necessary u-turn for a musician who proves that she has lost nothing of her trademark musical intuition. The disc opens and closes with works by British jazz composer Sir John Dankworth; 'Suite for Emma', effectively a song suite, is a smiling, bubbly affair. Bernstein, with the quasi neo-classical 1942 sonata, where the piano sound is not always optimal, and Copland, via his re-worked 1943 sonata, take centre stage on a disc accompanied by Johnson's own absorbing notes.