Some aspects of Christmas are to be enjoyed; others must simply be endured. At the risk of sounding like an enormous musical humbug, I tend to find sitting through performances of Messiah falls into the latter category.

There's no question that the oratorio contains some of Handel's most inspired music, yet the sublime stuff is buried amid much that is sententious, routine and bound up with the kind of strange, patriotic rituals we continue to perform without really knowing why, like tuning in to hear what the Queen has to say after Christmas lunch.

The Northern Sinfonia and Chorus performed the work to mark the first anniversary of the Sage Gateshead. It is a unique venue that encourages intimacy, and from the soft tread of Thomas Zehetmair's handling of the overture, to the delicately floated pianissimo of James Oxley's recitative, it was apparent that this was to be a Messiah stripped of bombast and portentousness.

Whether such a feather-light approach would succeed for the duration was another matter. However you conceive it, Messiah remains a sequence of grand statements, whereas Zehetmair offers a string of intricate details. And though the members of the Sinfonia Chorus make a crisply defined sound, there simply aren't enough of them, nor sufficient security in the upper register, to produce the ringing authority that Handel's choruses demand.

There are highlights, most of them courtesy of soprano Gillian Keith, who is immaculate throughout. Yet when alto Wilke te Brummelstroete affects to crack with emotion during He Was Despised, it chalks up yet another of the work's inviolable cliches.

Of course, all Messiahs are ultimately defined by their Hallelujah moment - ideally a point at which people are propelled from their seats by the intensity of the music. Here the audience gradually hauled itself to its feet as if taken by surprise. But it's a welcome opportunity to stretch one's legs during an incredibly protracted evening.