Vladimir Horowitz got his groove back on Lake Kezar.

By Colin W. Sargent

Fireside stories color our lakes like drifting pre-dawn mists.

Vladimir Horowitz, by many accounts the greatest pianist since Liszt, came in secret to Quisisana Resort on Lake Kezar in Lovell for nearly a month during his self-imposed 12 years of silence. He and his Steinway occupied a rustic cottage named Quartet (three bedrooms and a parlor for his piano shipped from New York—or Boston, according to some reports) where he could hear himself think. The whole operation was so undercover that his biographer Glenn Plaskin (Horowitz, William Morrow, $29.95), a classically trained pianist himself, is surprised to learn this. “Honestly, I have no idea that Horowitz visited the state of Maine in 1962.”

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.