The day before I was to judge the final round of the Royal College of Music’s prestigious Chappell Medal Competition, a colleague told me that I would immediately know who I’d choose as the winner. ‘Just two or three bars of music, and you’ll understand what I mean.’

I broached his comment sceptically; after all, the RCM has for decades produced many outstanding young pianists. Yet sure enough, my colleague was absolutely right. When Magdalene Ho launched into Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, she immediately transported us into Schumann’s volatile, impassioned and fervently creative sound world. I got a sense that this 20-year-old pianist was not so much interpreting as inhabiting the music. To play one of Schumann’s most inspired yet elusive large-scale works in a competition’s final round takes confidence, to say the least. Yet to follow Schumann’s Op 6 with Scriabin’s strange, necromantic Seventh Sonata is positively cheeky. True to form, Magdalene Ho organised the music’s complex textural strands with sensuality, lucidity, and colourful luminosity. Her judicious pacing and scaling of dynamics and her controlled abandon at the climaxes were those of a seasoned master rather than an abundantly talented student. While all of the day’s other contestants played very well, and often better than that, Magdalene Ho’s special qualities elicited an immediate and unanimous first-prize verdict.

Born in California in 2003 to Malaysian parents, Magdalene remembers being attracted to the sound of her piano at home from an early age. After making rapid progress, the nine-year-old pianist moved from Malaysia to the UK, enrolling at the Purcell School for Young Musicians. A vivid example of her prodigious gifts can be found in a performance of Liszt’s Gnomenreigen when she was just 11 – easily found on YouTube – where the sheer finesse and characterful verve of the playing belie her young age.

Between the ages of nine and 18 Magdalene studied with the eminent pianist and pedagogue Patsy Toh, who was married to the pianist Fou Ts’ong for over three decades until his death in 2020. Toh had been awarded a scholarship in her youth to study with Yvonne Lefébure at the Paris Conservatoire. She also had lessons with Alfred Cortot, Dame Myra Hess and Aube Tzerko (a pupil of Artur Schnabel).

The legacy of this lineage is not lost on Magdalene, who continues to draw inspiration from their recordings. I asked her what specifically she learned from Patsy. ‘It’s hard to say, because she taught me all through my formative years. But one thing she instilled in me was a respect for the score and trying to understand the composer’s intentions. Once you do that, you can start to find your own voice. I also played Mozart’s E flat Concerto, K271, for Fou Ts’ong. Although he was kind of quiet and modest, he did give me useful advice about phrasing and sound.’ Since 2022 Magdalene has been studying with Dmitri Alexeev at the RCM. ‘He’s a stimulating teacher, even when he makes suggestions that clash with my ideas. But I appreciate that in a teacher. I don’t think it would be as interesting to have someone who always agrees with me!’

Recognition came early for Magdalene, starting at the Purcell School, where she was awarded the ABRSM Silver Medal and Sheila Mossman Prize. In 2018 she made her concerto debut playing Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No 1 with the Oxford Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Robert Max. She recorded her first solo album in 2019 as part of a prize won at the Pianale Festival in Fulda, Germany. ‘I wanted to record Schumann’s Humoreske, but I was advised against recording Romantic music, probably because so many other young pianists were doing that. So we put together a programme interchanging Preludes and Fugues from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier with the eight early Preludes by Messiaen.’

Magdalene Ho made international headlines in 2023 when she won the Clara Haskil Competition in Vevey, Switzerland, as the youngest of the three finalists. Along with first prize, she also received the Audience Award, the ‘Children’s Corner’ prize and the ‘Coup de coeur’ prize for young critics. Her performances from the competition are available on YouTube, including an aristocratic and classically poised account of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No 4. She’s been sponsored by the Weir Award via the Keyboard Charitable Trust, from which recitals have followed in the UK and Italy. In his review of Magdalene’s recital at the British Institute in Florence on 27 February 2024, Christopher Axworthy praised her interpretations: ‘from Bach of surprising beauty and eloquence to the intimate whispered confessions of Brahms and finally the sublime poetic outpourings of eternal love by Schumann’.

Given my response to Magdalene’s Schumann, I was not surprised to learn how close this composer is to her heart, and that she would welcome the opportunity to record both Davidsbündlertänze and Carnaval, the latter piece playing a key role in her Clara Haskil victory. She included Carnaval in her 7 November 2023 London recital as part of the Leighton House Museum Discovery Series, which can be found on YouTube.

While it’s hard to know where Magdalene Ho will be in 10 or 20 years, her passion for music, her commitment to her craft, her recreative brilliance and the communicative power beneath her modest stage demeanour all augur well for a successful and fulfilling career and life in music.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of International Piano. Never miss an issue – subscribe today