Channel crossing: Ronen Chamber Ensemble presents Britten, Sancan, Vaughan Williams

The most surprising of major-composer interactions, judging from the contrast of their mature styles,  temperaments and the genres they practiced, may be  Ralph Vaughan Williams' study with Maurice Ravel in 1907-08. Those lessons in Paris seem to have spurred an advance in the English composer's forging of his mature style. The association amounts to a milestone in the long history of artistic interaction across the Channel between the ancient political and cultural foes.

David Sadlier came from Texas to sing "On Wenlock Edge"

One of Vaughan Williams' signature accomplishments in his immediate post-Ravel phase was the song cycle "On Wenlock Edge," an insightful setting of six poems by A.E. Housman from his milestone collection of gemlike lyrics, "A Shropshire Lad." 

Completed in 1909, the piece was the crown jewel of Ronen Chamber Ensemble's second concert of the 2025-26 season, titled "Across the English Channel," which will be presented again tonight at the University of Indianapolis.

The performance featured a tenor from Texas, David Sadlier, of superlative expressive focus and a tone that embraced the recital and oratorio sides of the tenor spectrum. 

Vaughan Williams' use of the string-quartet-and-piano accompaniment is varied across the poetry's emotional range. Sadlier was well-served by the playing Sunday afternoon of pianist Gregory Martin, a Ronen artistic director, and four Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra members at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. The string players are violinists Melissa Deal and Yeajin Kim, violist Zhanbo Zheng, and cellist Stephen Hawkey.

From the title song to begin with, it was clear Sunday's account was going to be in good hands. The text ranges across the region's history, focusing on the symbolic significance of ancient Roman settlement there and the evocative way stormy winds blow forward into Housman's late 19th century. The instrumental sonorities had a brisk waving feel, well-coordinated and supportive of the vocal line.

Vaughan Williams puts his music under the emotional sway of the words. The bittersweet song "Is My Team Ploughing?" takes the form of a dialogue between a living speaker and his dead friend, with the former, ironically linked with the other's sweetheart now, given greater strength through the cello's prominence in the stanzas the poet has him speaking. This song's performance Sunday was typical of the keenly judged balances over all six songs.

The funereal fifth song, "Bredon Hill," brought forth the ensemble's subtlest playing, nowhere more so than in the lamenting string phrase before the singer repeats his promise, in the song's last line, to come to the graveyard. Kudos to Martin for supplying easy-to-read texts plus a map of Wenlock Edge and its environs to enhance the audience's appreciation.

The program's other two works included a rarely heard piece for flute and piano by Pierre Sancan, a modestly endowed 20th-century French composer who apparently didn't rate even a one-paragraph entry in the New Grove Dictionary. His "Sonatine" turned out to be worth hearing and was compatibly played by Martin and another Ronen co-director, Alistair Howlett. The style, with its flute-forward zest, may ultimately derive from Debussy, but its academic manner, though picturesque, suggested the more classical reserve of Ravel. The three crisply focused movements got a needed boost of flamboyance from the flute cadenza, marvelously played by Howlett, linking the second and third.

The concert opened on the other side of the channel with Benjamin Britten's early Phantasy Quartet, played by the other Ronen co-director, oboist Jennifer Christen, and Kim, Zheng, and Hawkey. An Opus 2 loaded with promise of better things to come from the teenage composer, the work introduces a march that the New Grove describes as "cryptic," with a calmer section that allows treatment of the march to re-emerge persuasively before rounding off quietly.

 "Uncertainty of tone," a phrase that New Grove applies  to the work, may be alluding to the odd relationship of the contrasted elements. Marches are quite tempting for composers to adapt for high art,  but they stir feelings that are either military or simply sensational (Berlioz and Mahler, for instance).  If you don't know quite why a composer resorts to the march in a short piece, the tendency to consider it cryptic is understandable. However you might interpret it in this case, the performance Sunday afternoon, with Christen's peerless oboe as drum major and the strings falling into line, was thoroughly charming.