Reviews from the Press
"The Hidden City Festival's Battle Hymns might easily have joined the company of incomplete experimental adventures.... So many possible pitfalls, however, made the piece's success all the more heroic. Lang's score is a marvel even by his increasingly high standard. Stein's choreography consistently underscored the music's power.... Much of the piece's heroism had to do with the Mendelssohn Club.... The repetitiveness of Lang's music - often with music director Alan Harler conducting with his ear pressed to an electronic metronome - is affecting for audiences but hugely strenuous for the singers. Even with occasionally ragged moments, I couldn't respect this group enough."
Review of Battle Hymns performed June 13, 2009 from Philadelphia Inquirer"Music lives in the moment of performance, and it lives on as long as performers return to re-create those moments. That mystical idea floated over the Mendelssohn Club's performance of Verdi's Messa da Requiem Sunday at the Kimmel Center's Verizon Hall."
Review of Verdi Requiem + Higdon Premiere from Philadelphia Inquirer, March 31, 2009
"Not only did Harler, his singers, the Mendelssohn Brass and organist Michael Stairs offer a little bit of just about everything in the holiday mode, they did so with such perfect balance and cohesion that I found myself wondering why other music directors can't do the same. ."
Review of "From Heaven on High" from the Chestnut Hill Local, December 2008" Mendelssohn Club sang out against death and wars Saturday in an adventurous program at Girard College."
Review ofOn the Transmigration of Souls from Philadelphia Inquirer, November 5, 2007"Hill area singers superb in Mendelssohn's 'Elijah',"
Review of Elijah from Chestnut Hill Local May 21, 2007"In celebration of its 130th anniversary, the Mendelssohn Club accomplished what is, for many, the impossible: Its Sunday concert at the Kimmel Center gave you reason to respect Carl Orff's annoyingly popular."
Review of an An Evening of Passion March 28, 2004 concert, from The Philadelphia Inquirer"What immediately strikes you about [ Charles Fussell's High Bridge ], premiered Saturday night at Philadelphia Cathedral by the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia to open its 130th season, is that it is a work of great substance.... the Mendelssohnians have gotten themselves, and the entire choral field, a major new work that deserves to be discovered and rediscovered."
Review of High Bridge October 25, 2003 concert, from The Philadelphia Inquirer
Reviews from our audience
"I went to the Mendelssohn Club concert On the Transmigration of Souls in early November at Girard College. It was many years
since I had heard the group, and this current incarnation of this group knocked me out. The chorus has everything you want to hear in vocal music and then some, meaning it goes way past the
usual boundaries of what we expect to hear from any singers, volunteer or professional, in terms of emotion, programming, skill and heart."
--Concert-goer