RENAISSANCE, a young vocal sextet, performed unaccompanied music from two eras: 16th and early 17th century, and post-1940.

The programme’s title Un Soir De Neige indicated that two works of that name were to be its backbone. Poulenc’s four short wartime settings of Paul Éluard, secular yet spiritual, certainly fit the concert’s slow-moving, solemn tone. Their often-chromatic austerity was projected expressively.

A Night of Snow by the group’s founder, bass and director Ben Rowarth – receiving its premiere – ebbed and flowed over long stretches, maintaining interest with remarkable economy of material. Soprano Charlotte La Thrope was secure and eloquent in the prominent chant on which it is based.

At a steady tread, which suited it, Tomás Luis de Victoria’s six-part Salve Regina saw individual voices emerging in turn from the integrated texture. Renaissance nicely contrasted the gentle outer sections of Byrd’s Lullaby with its central sibilant-dominated lament.

Gesualdo and Monteverdi madrigals were done “straight”, with no hint of a sigh in the latter’s Zefiro torna even when the text explicitly demanded them, although the clashes when we got to its ‘savage beasts’ registered effectively. The longest phrases were always calmly sustained.

Hilary Cronin was luminously clear in the high soprano part of Poulenc’s Salve Regina. Kenneth Leighton’s 1960 A Hymn of the Nativity, the last item, was the evening’s most communicative performance.

Renaissance, an accomplished ensemble who I would like to hear again, might have communicated even better had they emerged from behind their barricade of music stands.