Makeover for the 'MESSIAH'

Imagine being hired to repaint the Mona Lisa. To rebuild Notre Dame. To rewrite “Huckleberry Finn.”

That’s how Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström felt when the Oregon Bach Festival approached him to compose a new “Messiah,” based on the same text used 2½ centuries ago by George Frideric Handel.

“It’s almost like someone asking you to make a new Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,” Sandström said in a telephone interview earlier this month from his home in Sweden.

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