POP MUSIC REVIEW : ‘Young Messiah’ Can’t Get Handle on Rock, Passion : The performers of this updated expression of Christian faith present a tentative show in Anaheim. Soloists were the saving grace.

The idea of the “Young Messiah Tour” is to lift Handel’s “Messiah” from its classical pedestal and bring it to fans of contemporary Christian pop in a modernized, rock-accented form.

Reverential hands did the lifting Thursday night at the Anaheim Convention Center--which proved to be a mixed blessing.

For the soloists, stars of the Christian pop world, the “Messiah” presumably is foremost an expression of deeply felt core beliefs, not just a cultural monument of some 250 years’ standing. That religious reverence was all to the good: It made for peak passages full of passion and immediacy--notably from top-billed Sandi Patti.

Still, this “Messiah” (at 68 minutes, it was resequenced in some stretches, and pared down by more than half from the original by producer Norman Miller) could have used a dash of iconoclasm. There was a certain stiffness in the singers’ bearing, as if they didn’t want to commit any lapses of decorum in the face of a classic. Nobody cut loose on the cross-shaped, poinsettia-festooned stage set up in the middle of the arena (an indoor hangar that hampered the performance--especially the chorus passages--with echoes and murk).

As a massive choir boomed the concluding Hallelujah Chorus, the 11 featured soloists gathered on stage together, looking awkward and tentative, as if they didn’t quite know what to do.

The use of rock instrumentation was far too reverential: not toward Handel, certainly, but toward dull pop conventions. Electronic drums, digital keyboards and electric guitar augmented a 40-piece orchestra and a 200-voice choir (both made up of local recruits). The best that can be said of the drumming was that it wasn’t over-amplified. Some rhythmic daring could have served as a prod. Instead, dreary, lock-step beats held the music in check (luckily, that massed choir often was simply able to overpower the drumming). The keyboard tones were chiming and hollow--the standard, synthesized sound of so much slick, middle-of-the-road pop. Guitarist Phil Keaggy’s occasional note-shredding solos followed rote patterns, although there was some curiosity value in seeing and hearing a whammy-bar applied to Handel. Keaggy’s groaning chords did add something useful to “Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs,” underscoring the segment’s account of Jesus’ suffering.

For every such pop accent that worked, there were several that were annoying. When the keyboardist echoed trumpet figures in “The Trumpet Shall Sound” with some tinny-sounding pseudo-organ, it only cheapened a passage that should have been given exclusively to grandeur (trumpeter Phil Driscoll strained for that grandeur on the same piece and wound up sounding shrill and busy, the way horn soloists usually do when called upon to jazz up “The Star Spangled Banner” at sporting events). The somber “He Was Despised” came with a pitter-patter of vaguely Latin percussion--not exactly an embellishment that would lend the requisite gravitas .

The best vocal passages more than made up for those instrumental lapses. Patti was a pure-sounding diva well suited to a classical milieu. She brought a soaring, dignified voice and a commanding, unforced presence to her two emotionally weighty solos. The concert’s most vivid moment came when she sang the core affirmation of Christian doctrine, “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth,” delivering the words “I know” with a clench of her fist and an assertive tremor in her voice that expressed an almost defiant conviction.

Patti’s forcefulness during the “Messiah” performance contrasted with the brisk, wholesome, auntie-serving-cookies demeanor she had displayed as mistress of ceremonies during an hourlong warm-up segment devoted to Christmas carols and sing-alongs.

Driscoll, a raspy, Joe Cocker sound-alike, turned in an energetic, soulful vocal on “Trumpet.” Russ Taff’s more attenuated R&B; style was far less impressive. The Imperials, a four-man vocal group, were a tentative bunch who failed to bring much lift to “Lift Up Your Heads.” Sheila Walsh, though overshadowed by Patti, turned in clean, emotive performances. Michael English was workmanlike as a last-minute substitute for Larnelle Harris, who was absent because of the death of his mother the night before.

The first, pre-”Messiah” half of the concert featured one scorching performance--a dark, urgent duet by Keaggy and Melodie Tunney on “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.” It’s too bad that the dusky-voiced Tunney--who sounded as if she could give Melissa Etheridge some competition if she were to switch over to the secular side--didn’t have her own turn in the spotlight during the “Young Messiah.”

Other than that, the preliminaries were tepid, with canned instrumentation and backing vocals making for distanced, detached renditions of some Christmas standards. The use of tapes in the first half introduced an element of doubt about the “Young Messiah” presentation that followed. Was that huge and huge-sounding choir live, or was it getting help from Memorex?