A 20-year-old blind pianist from Japan and a 19-year-old musician from China shared the gold medal at the 13th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Nobuyuki Tsujii and Haochen Zhang picked up their prizes at an award ceremony Sunday in Bass Hall in Fort Worth, Texas, the Fort Worth Star Telegram reported Monday. Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son, 23, won the silver medal for the competition, which featured 29 contenders from 14 countries. The winners each received $20,000 cash awards, opportunities to record albums and professional career management for the next three years. The Star Telegram noted this was the first time in the competition's history the top three winners were from Asia.

LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y., June 2 /PRNewswire/ -- In an unprecedented opportunity for pianists and music enthusiasts, Steinway & Sons will simultaneously release 45 signature pianos, all signed by legendary Steinway Artist Van Cliburn, for public sale on June 20 and 21 at Steinway Hall--Ft. Worth.

LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y., May 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Beginning today, The Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, featuring Steinway & Sons pianos exclusively, will be streamed live in its entirety at www.cliburn.tv.

LONG ISLAND CITY, N.Y., Dec. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Steinway & Sons, makers of the finest pianos in the world, brings its Legendary Instruments of the Immortals Tour to the Steinway Piano Gallery in Miami, December 7th through December 31, 2008.

If cultural gods tell us more about us than about themselves, Van Cliburn holds a particularly warped and smoky mirror up to the classical-music world he intermittently dominated over the last half-century _ one that shows much about the strange price of being a folk hero.