Orli Shaham has many claims to fame. She has established an impressive international reputation as one of today’s most gifted pianists. She is the wife of the music director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, David Robertson. She is the sister of the brilliant violinist Gil Shaham with whom she concertizes. She is beautiful and charming and, to add to her accomplishments, she is the mother of three-and-a- half-month old twins, Nathan Glen and Alex Jacob. Orli enjoyed a three month maternity leave and canceled her fall engagements, but now she has resumed her career which includes her regular schedule plus a special recital in St. Louis on Valentine’s Day.

Traditionally Valentine’s Day is the most romantic holiday of the year, and Chopin is the crown prince of the romantic music movement. It is no accident that Orli Shaham has chosen to play an all-Chopin program on Thursday, Feb. 14 at 8 p.m. at Powell Symphony Hall. Her first encounter with her future husband took place on Jan. 21, 1999 when she was the soloist with the SLSO which David conducted. They played a Chopin Piano Concerto. Orli thinks that the hall’s Green Room where they met initially is the most romantic spot in the world, so performing Chopin works on Valentine’s Day at Powell is a natural for her. Tickets for this special recital are $20 to $50, and the staff of the orchestra tells me that the Grand Tier boxes are the most romantic “as they have those cool ante rooms”.

For tickets, call the box office at 314-534-1700 or go on line at www.slso.org.

Orli Shaham, a child prodigy in Israel where she was born, received her first scholarship for musical study at age 5 from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation. Two years later she came to New York with her family and began study there.

She attended the Juilliard School on scholarship, graduating from the Horace Mann School and earning a degree in history at Columbia University. Her career as a concert pianist has been spectacular. Whether playing Prokofiev, Ravel, Mozart or John Adams, she mesmerizes her audiences with her technical skills, infectious joy and innate musicality.

Orli has performed with numerous American symphony orchestras and has done tours of Europe and Japan.

Now Orli is returning to the concert stage after her maternity leave. She will resume her regular schedule and plans on taking the twins with her.

“Fortunately we found a wonderful nanny who is willing to travel so the babies will come along and will be well cared for. On their first trip from New York to St. Louis they were fine as they nursed and slept all the way. I expect that they will be good travelers.”

Orli told me Nathan and Alex are not identical twins, although they have the same fair hair and blue eyes, but they have entirely different personalities.

Orli described her Valentine’s Day program for me. “I will open with a Barcarolle which was the first piece I ever felt comfortable performing as a teenager. Then I will play the B Minor Sonata, the pinnacle of Chopin’s large work writing. It’s a tour-de- force, a powerful piece with a lot of variety, and I’ve always wanted to perform it. The second half of the program will include all those lovely works everyone loves — mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, and I will finish up with the Fourth Ballade. The problem with playing Chopin is that there is so much to choose from, but this is a program of my favorite Chopin works, even though I have had to leave out some of them.”

I asked Orli how she feels about playing a recital versus performing an orchestral work. “Actually a recital is much, much harder. You are on stage alone with no safety net, and you open yourself up. It’s very personal. I think about what it takes to get there. Also you have the most freedom in recital, but you do fail by your own hand or succeed by your own hand.”

So you may celebrate Orli Shaham’s love affair with David Robertson and Frederick Chopin and maybe celebrate your own love on Feb. 14.