Gia Margaret initially titled her new album Romantic Piano to be a little cheeky. The spare, gentle piano pieces have more in common with Erik Satie, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou, and Masakatsu Takagi's "Marginalia" releases than with a cozy candlelit date. But this cheekiness conceals a hidden agenda: The beautiful set suggests "romanticism" in a more classical sense, what the Germans call "waldeinsamkeit" (forest solitude). The compositions evoke the sublime themes of the Romantic poets: solitude in nature, nature's ability to heal and teach, a sense of contented melancholy. "I wanted to make music that was useful," Margaret says, vastly understating the record's power. Romantic Piano is curious, soothing, patient, and incredibly moving—but it doesn't linger for more than a second. Margaret's debut album, There's Always Glimmer, was a lyrical marvel, but when an illness on tour left her unable to sing, she recorded her ambient album, "Mia Gargaret" (another cheeky title!), which showcased a fine sense of arrangement and composition that wasn't fully evident in the lyrical songs of There's Always Glimmer. Romantic Piano, too, is almost entirely wordless. "Writing instrumental music is generally a much more joyful process than writing lyrics and ultimately informs my songwriting," she says. Romantic Piano solidifies her as a compositional force. Margaret originally aimed for a degree in composition but dropped out of music school halfway through. "I really didn't want to play in an orchestra," she says of her decision. "I really just wanted to write film music. Then I started to focus more and more on being a songwriter." Romantic Piano truly touches on a rare emotion in art, one often reserved only for cinema—the simultaneous awe of existence through the lens and the intimate inner monologue for language when we're stuck in our skulls. And that's very romantic!