As a choir accompanist who spends a lot of his time adding nuance to workaday piano writing, my ears perk up when I hear another musician spicing up the simple parts with some imagination. Whittingham does that here, bringing clear separation to the different parts—melody, bass, and inner voices—as well as interest and phrasing to the accompanying figures. She does this all while managing to sound unfussy and natural. She’s not quite into her 30s and is on the faculty at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, England. The selections on the album are generally easygoing and sometimes melancholy: charming covers of songs made famous by Edith Piaf (“La foule,” “La vie en rose,” “Hymne a l’amour”), and transcriptions of pieces like Debussy’s “Girl with the Flaxen Hair,” a Chopin waltz, one of Faure’s Three Romances without Words, and a few songs by Reynaldo Hahn (I particularly like the pizzicato effect on “L’heure exquise”). Other instruments join her, including cello, saxophone, and a second guitar; the Carducci Quartet brings a special brightness to Paul Durand’s “Mademoiselle de Paris” and nice sentiment to Charles Aznavour’s “She.” The sonics can vary considerably between tracks, but it’s still a thoroughly enjoyable album.