Many of Florence Price’s piano works have been recorded, not least by Kirsten Johnson (Guild, duplicating items here) and Samantha Ege (Lorelt). This new selection by Gerry Bryant – a pianist with one foot in the world of jazz – is curious (given his stated high regard for Price), an apparently random sequence of salon-like pieces, many in the ABA structure Price favoured, peppered with nicely played duos with Mark Cargill on the one hand, and three freer pieces by Thomas Wiggins (1849-1908) – arguably the first Black American classical composer.

It is unclear why only the central Andante – a neatly constructed rondo – of Price’s fine Piano Sonata (1932) is given, not the whole work. Similarly with Song without Words which, by dint of detective work (Price wrote at least three pieces with this title and Navona’s documentation is woefully inadequate), I confirmed as the third movement of the suite In the Land o’ Cotton (c1927 31). There are gems here – Honeysuckle (originally A Southern Sky, 1939, not to be confused with the later Honeysuckle at Dusk) and two tone pictures from 1947, Placid Lake and Sketches in Sepia – but all suffer from Bryant’s over-reverential, often rather lifeless playing, which lacks impulse compared to other interpreters (of which there are plenty, not least on YouTube). This in turn is not helped by Navona’s rather airless, flat sound.

‘Blind Tom’ Wiggins may be most familiar as the subject of Elton John’s 2013 ‘Ballad of Blind Tom’, at least outside the US. A slave and blind from birth, Wiggins showed extraordinary abilities to mimic sounds, songs and speech, and have near-absolute recall years, even decades later. Toured as a circus freak by his owners, his own compositions were written down for him (with how much editorial work is unclear) and published under various pseudonyms. The three pieces here present a brief but vivid snapshot of his remarkable facility, especially in Wellenklange and the Chopinesque nocturne Reve charmant, charming pastiches of European salon music. More original is The Sewing Song, an amusing imitation of a sewing machine.