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John Cage was a modernist composer with a playful sense of humor. In 1952 he wrote this short piano piece, which instructs the soloist not to play any notes at all – the only sound you hear being provided by audience and their surroundings.

The ensuing argument over whether or not this counts as music quickly made 4′33″ the most famous and controversial composition of Cage’s career. Today, the work is most widely understood as a challenge to the concept of silence – even when there’s apparently nothing present to make a sound, you can always hear something if you listen hard enough.

This week’s free Discovery Download is the first of the three movements, recorded at London’s historic Henry Wood Hall. Listen carefully, and you can hear traffic outside, creaking floorboards and a clock ticking somewhere in the building. If you like it, you can download the remainder of the album here and check out some of John Cage’s louder works here. Check out the album.

German Julia Fischer is a violinist in her mid-20s who has won a variety of prestigious competitions and performed orchestra and chamber music all over the globe. Her style is crisp, meticulous, and passionate. This track is taken from her new album of Bach Concertos. If you like the track, check out the album.

Ludovico Einaudi’s music is so enjoyably approachable that it may come as something of a surprise to learn that he studied under the famous experimental composer Luciano Berio. His simple, lyrical piano music is often described as “minimalist”, although many of his compositions are structured more like popular songs than the extreme minimalist works of Philip Glass and Michael Nyman.