Magdalene Ho

Winner of the 2023 Clara Haskil International Piano Competition in Vevey, Switzerland, the exceptionally talented young Malaysian pianist Magdalene Ho joins the list of prestigious Clara Haskil Prix recipients such as Christoph Eschenbach, Richard Goode, Till Fellner, Martin Helmchen and Mao Fujita. In the final round of the competition, Magdalene Ho performed Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 with the Zermatt Festival Orchestra under the direction of Gábor Takács-Nagy. With the 25.000 CHF Clara Haskil Prix, Ms. Ho also received an additional 8000 CHF by being awarded the Audience Prize, Young Critics’ Prize and Children’s Corner Prize.

Magdalene Ho was born in 2003 and started learning the piano at the age of four. In 2013 she began studying in the United Kingdom with Patsy Toh at the Purcell School. She received the ABRSM Sheila Mossman Prize and Silver Award in 2015 and in 2018 made her concerto debut playing Mendelssohn Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Oxford Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Max. As part of a prize won at the PIANALE International Piano Academy in Fulda, Germany, Magdalene Ho released an album of Bach and Messiaen works in 2019. She also had a composition of hers shortlisted by the BBC Young Composer Competition in the same year.

In 2021 Ms. Ho received the Grand prix and an award for the best performance of a composition from the Romantic period at the Balys Dvarionas Competition in Lithuania. Winning the concerto competition at the Purcell School gave her the opportunity to perform Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in December 2022.

Magdalene Ho was a finalist at the 2023 Düsseldorf Schumann Competition and was awarded the Joan Chissell Robert Schumann Prize for Piano at the Royal College of Music a few months later. She has been studying with Dmitri Alexeev at the Royal College of Music in London since September 2022, where she is a Dasha Shenkman Scholar supported by the Gordon Calway Stone Scholarship. Magdalene Ho is also sponsored by the Weir Award via the Keyboard Charitable Trust.