Malaysian pianist Magdalene Ho came to international attention after winning the Clara Haskil Piano Competition in 2023. Formerly a pupil of Patsy Toh at the Purcell School, she currently studies with Dmitri Alexeev at the Royal College of Music on a full scholarship.
In the 2025/26 season Magdalene Ho marks her recital debuts at the Tonhalle Zürich as well as with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Lithuanian National Philharmonic Orchestra. Other highlights of the season include her performances at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Rheingau Festival, the Lille Piano(s) Festival and as part of SWR Kultur Internationale Pianisten series in Mainz.
Only in the 2024/25 season, Magdalene Ho performed at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Laeiszhalle Hamburg, the Théâtre de la Ville Paris and the Teatro alla Scala Milan with Ensemble “Giorgio Bernasconi” under Wilson Hermanto, as well as with the Orchestre de Suisse Romande under Cornelius Meister, the SWR Symphonie orchester under Kirill Karabits and the Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra under Rafael Payare.
Magdalene Ho was born in 2003 and started learning the piano at the age of four. In 2013, she began studying in the UK. 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.