Magdalene Ho

Malaysian pianist Magdalene Ho was born in 2003 and started learning the piano at the age of four. In 2013, she began studying in the UK with Patsy Toh, at the Purcell School. In 2015, she received the ABRSM Sheila Mossman Prize and Silver Award. In 2018, she made her concerto debut playing Mendelssohn’s first Piano Concerto with the Oxford Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Max. As part of a prize won at the PIANALE piano festival in Fulda, Germany, she released an album of Bach and Messiaen works in 2019. She also had a composition shortlisted by the BBC Young Composer competition in the same year. She was a finalist at the Düsseldorf Schumann Competition 2023 and was awarded the Joan Chissell Schumann Prize for Piano at the Royal College of Music a few months later. In September 2023, she won the Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Vevey along with receiving the Audience Prize, Young Critics’ Prize and Children’s Corner Prize.

Magdalene has been studying with Dmitri Alexeev at the RCM since September 2022, where she is a Gordon Calway Stone Scholar. She is also sponsored by the Weir Award via the Keyboard Charitable Trust.