“The prototype of a sensitive pianist who not only has a dazzling technique at his disposal, but also proved himself a brilliant architect of the musical construction of individual works…” — Cologne Stadt-Anzeiger

“Of the several pianists who have essayed it[Ives Piano Sonata No. 1] on records, only Joanna MacGregor…has come close to Zimdars. Whereas MacGregor seems more poetic and imaginative at a few moments, her performance does not leave us shaking our heads in wonder, as this one does.” — Fanfare Magazine

Richard Zimdars is Despy Karlas Professor Emeritus of Piano at the University of Georgia. His students have won national prizes, received the Fulbright Grant for piano study in Germany, and hold college positions in the United States, Canada, Brazil, and South Korea. He has given master classes at the London and Dublin Royal Academies of Music, the Stuttgart and Detmold Musikhochschulen, Oberlin and San Francisco Conservatories, etc. From 2006-2008, he served on the National Fulbright Screening Committee for piano.

Zimdars has performed and broadcast in Europe, Brazil, Canada, and the U. S. His discography includes the violin sonatas of Ives, the piano music of Roy Harris, and works of Claude Baker, Bassett, Gilad Cohen, Copland, Cowell, Druckman, Heiden, Huck Hodge, Ives, William Matthews, Ji Eun Moon, Persichetti, Marga Richter, Rudhyar, Alexander Tcherepnin, Randall Thompson, and Natalie Williams.

He has published in Clavier, The Piano Quarterly, Journal of the American Liszt Society, American Music Teacher, and The Hungarian Quarterly. He is a contributing editor for Clavier Companion. Zimdars’ two published translations are The Piano Master Classes of Hans von Bülow and The Piano Master Classes of Franz Liszt. He has lectured on Liszt’s teaching in Europe and North America. A member of the American Liszt Society Board of Directors, he was artistic director of the 2011 ALS Festival celebrating the bicentennial of Liszt’s birth and that year founded the ALS Alan Walker Book Award in honor of the great biographer of Liszt, Chopin, and von Bülow.