It’s difficult to think of a figure in the annals of American classical music more glamorous than Leonard Bernstein: conductor, composer, pianist, teacher, and media celebrity. Though gone for more than a decade now, he is still a household name. Yet the man remains as mystifying as ever. None of the biographical writings has managed to pin him down. No critical appraisal of his work – much of it negative during his lifetime – comes close to being the final word. His name may be universally recognized, but his serious music is, according to executive director of Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, George Steel, “little known and underappreciated.”

A conductor as well as an adventurous programmer, Mr. Steel is hosting a Bernstein celebration as Miller’s season opener this Saturday night. Indeed, the concert is but one sign that, in the words of Steve Rowland, “this is a Bernstein moment.” Mr. Rowland is the producer of a new 11-part radio documentary series, “Leonard Bernstein: An American Life,” which will air across the WFMT radio network beginning next month. Meanwhile, the Milken Archive has released a CD called “Leonard Bernstein: A Jewish Legacy,” with several world premieres of specifically Jewish works by the composer. And Kultur International Films is about to release 25 of the universally acclaimed Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic, starring Bernstein the master educator.

The range of Bernstein’s interests and influences, as well as of his strengths and weaknesses, is hinted at in the Miller program. It will include the ardent “Serenade” for solo violin, strings, harp, and percussion (1954); the sassy “Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs” (1949); the dramatic second movement of “Kaddish” (Symphony No. 3) (1963); selections from the opera “A Quiet Place” (1983); and Three Dance Episodes from “On the Town” (1945). These are hardly unknown works. Of them, only “A Quiet Place” is new to New York. And “Serenade,” according to Bernstein’s publisher, Boosey & Hawkes, will be the second most performed Bernstein piece this season, followed closely by “On the Town” (first place goes to “Candide”).

Still, said Mr. Steel, “to present even well known pieces like ‘On the Town’ in front of a Miller audience is different than doing it at a pops concert.” His purpose is to “show the breadth of this work – not of Bernstein the conductor or television personality or author, but of Bernstein the composer.”

“For a series like ours,” he said, “so focused on living and important 20thcentury composers, it’s fitting that we include Bernstein. His music is incredibly well made. And no one has given it the same kind of scrutiny as is given to other composers of his generation. Bernstein’s music is so familiar that people think it’s easy. He was interested in immediacy and communication with his audience, and that lets analysts off too easily. People believe that it’s not profound because it doesn’t represent the ‘other’ to American audiences.”

While it’s too early to determine the rightful place of much of this music in posterity, the Miller lineup affords an opportunity to trace both common threads and conflicting aspirations in Bernstein’s output. One of the unanswered questions about his legacy is just how well his concert works stand up to those written for the musical theater. My own response on this has certainly been conflicted.

Take, for instance, the “Serenade,” designated by the composer as having been based on Plato’s “Symposium,” a dialogue about eros. Plato’s setting is a banquet where seven characters give speeches about the nature and origins of this powerful force in human conduct. It’s easy to see why Bernstein was taken with the dialogue. Aside from the homoerotic aspects of the work, it is ultimately about the drive for wholeness, the moral obligation to pass knowledge and understanding on to future generations – the belief, as Diotima tells Socrates, that in life one “engenders only in beauty” and under the influence of love. All this was right up Bernstein’s alley.

“He was in love with the world and with music,” Mr. Rowland explained. “He really did think he could change the world, and that human beings could be made better.”

The composer did not attempt a programmatic representation of the text. You will search in vain for musical allusions to the memorable scenes of the “Symposium,” such as Aristophanes’s hiccups or his mythological story of the origin of humankind, in which spherical creatures with four hands, four legs, and two faces are split apart by Zeus into men and women. These five movements instead convey Bernstein’s emotional reactions to the speeches.

“It’s a work of remarkable accomplishment,” says Mr. Steel. “It reflects the conversational nature of the ‘Symposium’ by taking a theme and turning it out in many different ways. In some sense it’s his answer to Stravinsky’s ‘Apollo.'”

Yet the “Symposium” is a work of light touch; Plato filled it with good-natured humor, even as the characters reveal their deepest sentiments. Bernstein’s rendering is, by contrast, at times emotionally overwrought. There are playful moments, to be sure, and passages of lyrical sweetness. In its intense earnestness, however, this work about love ultimately fails to touch the heart in the way that, say, “Lonely Town” from “On the Town,” does. Why?

Mr. Rowland suggested one reason. “I asked Stephen Sondheim why some of Bernstein’s works were so heavy-handed,” he told me. “He said that Bernstein was too determined to produce things of great importance. ‘He cared about posterity,’ said Sondheim, who worked as Bernstein’s collaborator on the songs for ‘West Side Story’ (1957), adding, ‘and I don’t.'”

Similar points can be raised about his “Kaddish” (Symphony No. 3) – which George Steel describes as “a poor cousin to the other two” – laden as it is with long, agonized narration (which is being excised for the Miller performance). It is also one of the few cases in which Bernstein employed the 12-tone method of composition. The Kaddish is often thought of as a prayer for the dead, though it is used in a variety of contexts (and though it contains no mention of death at all – only praises for God). In a twist, Bernstein’s narrator here argues angrily with a God who seems to have forsaken the world. Dramatically, it’s a hard act to pull off.

Yet it’s good that the Jewish element will be represented, because it is inescapably a part of Bernstein’s creative legacy. In his last published interview, the composer noted that he had only later in life realized that the opening figure in “West Side Story” was derived from the blowing of the shofar, or ram’s horn, on the high holy days. Bernstein was serious about researching Jewish musical elements, and reached out to authorities early on at the Massachusetts synagogue of his youth and later at the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York. Cantor Leon Lissek recently spoke to me about this, and the Milken Archive release offers unknown gems that grew from these investigations.

Bernstein’s “Jeremiah” (Symphony No. 2) (1942) makes extensive use of a melody specifically used for the introduction of the haftorah portion of the Jewish prayer service (readings from the Prophets), brilliantly energized and reshaped through jazzy, Bernsteinian rhythms. (Here, too, one can find fragments that will make their way into “West Side Story.”) As composer and longtime Bernstein associate Jack Gottlieb points out in his new book, “Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs And Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood” (SUNY Press, 306 pages, $40), there are also shofar calls in “Candide” (there is even a place in the score with the indication, “like a shofar”), the “Concerto for Orchestra: Jubilee Games,” and the musical, “On the Town.”

Mr. Gottlieb reminds us in his program notes for the Milken Archives release that Bernstein’s earliest memory of music was from an experience he had in temple in 1926,at age 8,when he felt something stirring within him, “as though,” he said, “I were becoming subconsciously aware of music as my raison d’etre.” His Jewish heritage permeated his work.

As did his love of jazz. Hence the inclusion at the Miller Theater of “Prelude, Fugue and Riffs,” a sometimes raucous, ferociously joyful piece that Mr. Steel sees as a tribute to Stravinsky (who wrote the “Ebony Concerto” for Woody Herman). Finally, there are the excerpts from “A Quiet Place, “Bernstein’s sequel to “Trouble in Tahiti,” in which he and librettist Stephen Wadsworth attempted to exorcise their personal demons around the subject of family relationships.

Leonard Bernstein was an artist of extraordinarily wide-ranging interests who was nurtured in, and left an indelible imprint on, our culture. “We called our radio series ‘Leonard Bernstein: An American Life,'” explained Mr. Rowland, “because a person could only develop that way as an American in the 20th century.” In a time when there seems to be less and less to celebrate, it’s good to remember that he was ours.

“Composer Portraits: Leonard Bernstein” at Miller Theatre September 18 at 7 p.m. (2960 Broadway, at 116th Street, 212-854-1633).