The DePaul University School of Music faculty was greatly enhanced this year with the appointments of three prominent string players, including cellist Stephen Balderston. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s (CSO) assistant principal cellist, Balderston has undertaken a full-time position this year with the university as associate professor of cello and coordinator of string programs. He will perform a free, public faculty recital at 8 p.m., Feb. 14, in the DePaul Concert Hall, 800 W. Belden Ave., on the university’s Lincoln Park Campus.

Balderston calls his Valentine’s Day recital a celebration of love and romance. The cellist and his keyboard accompanist, Daniel Paul Horn, will be partnered with their wives, Megan Balderston, soprano, and Denise Gamez, mezzo-soprano, in a performance of composer/pianist Jake Heggie’s “My True Love Hath My Heart” (1996). Heggie burst on to the international music scene in October of 2000 with the overwhelming success of his first opera, “Dead Man Walking.”

Works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and Piazzolla complete this musical tribute to love. The duet between Papageno and Pamina, extolling the joys of married life from Mozart’s great opera, “The Magic Flute,” provides the theme for the recital’s opening piece, Beethoven’s “Seven Variations on Bei Männern welche liebe fühlen.” Passionate and intense, Rachmaninov’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op. 19,” was completed shortly after the composer announced his engagement to his cousin, Natalya Satina. Tchaikovsky was, himself, a pianist, and wrote dozens of solo pieces for this instrument, including the expressive “Valse sentimentale.”

The smoldering and passionate tango of Argentina was denounced in Western Europe and the United States early in the 20th century for its lascivious nature. It was Astor Piazzolla, one of the tango’s greatest champions, who brought this music respectability and increased its popularity as a classical art form. His “Grand Tango for Cello and Piano” will be performed.

Throughout his career, Balderston has balanced performance with teaching and coaching. At this time in his professional life, however, Balderston’s priority is teaching. “Although the challenges of working with students are enormous, I believe I have a lot to offer those just beginning a life in music,” he says. “When the cello position became available at DePaul, it was my time to make a switch.” Balderston is able to help shape DePaul’s music programs, and in turn influence the training of the 100-plus students studying string instruments. “In our music school curriculum, we always aim for a healthy mix of performance and education while pushing the standard higher and higher. It is in performance that we strive for no limits at all.”

Balderston joined the CSO in 1993 and began teaching part-time at DePaul in 1999. Today, he is one of 15 CSO members on the faculty. An active participant in Chicago’s musical life, Balderston is a much sought-after soloist, chamber player and coach and has collaborated with Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach, Yo-Yo Ma and Pichas Zukerman, among others. He has worked with students in a variety of venues, including Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Workshops (he returns to this project in Seville in the summer of 2004), the Shanghai International Music Festival and the Marrowstone Music Festival in Seattle. He earned his music degrees from the Juilliard School, where he studied with Lynn Harrell.

In addition to the Feb. 14 performance, Balderston will join his colleague Ilya Kaler, a new member of DePaul’s distinguished string faculty this season, as soloists in the annual Joseph and Marie Grant DePaul Symphony Orchestra Spring Concert May 19 at Orchestra Hall. Cliff Colnot, DePaul’s director of Orchestral Activities, will conduct. For more information about DePaul music events, call the DePaul School of Music: (773) 325-7260.