Zacharias studied piano with Irene Slavin and Vlado Perlemuter in Paris. He won second prize at both the Geneva Competition in 1969 and the Van Cliburn Competition in 1973. After winning the Ravel Competition in Paris in 1975, he launched an international career. He has performed chamber music with such partners as the Alban Berg Quartet, the Guarneri Quartet, the Leipzig String Quartet, Heinrich Schiff, and Frank Peter Zimmermann. He made many recordings, among them a 1979 recording of 33 sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, the complete Schubert piano sonatas, and the complete Mozart piano concertos (available on EMI classics).