Selections from Sea Pieces, Op. 55 by Edward MacDowell // Zhengyi Huang, piano

Selections from Sea Pieces, Op. 55: “To the Sea,” “A.D. MDCXX,” and “From the Depths” Edward MacDowell’s Sea Pieces belongs to a late Romantic world in which a brief piano piece could suggest an entire landscape or story. His ocean changes character from one selection to the next. “To the Sea” opens with broad chords and an almost orchestral weight: this is water on a vast scale, magnificent and a little forbidding. In “A.D. MDCXX,” the Roman numerals give the year 1620. The verse printed above the music imagines a ship making its way toward a distant land, and the piano’s rolling motion carries both the vessel’s steady progress and the uncertainty of the voyage. “From the Depths” turns our attention beneath the surface. Its hushed, rocking opening grows darker and more insistent, building toward a powerful surge before the mystery of the deep can be fully resolved. MacDowell’s shifting harmonies and changes of register make these three pieces feel remarkably distinct: the sea as immensity, as passage, and as an unseen force.