This is a summary of 1958 in music in the United Kingdom, including the official charts from that year.
Events
24 January – Paul McCartney makes his first appearance at The Cavern Club in Liverpool with The Quarrymen. 5 February – Michael Tippett's Symphony No. 2 is first performed in London. 12 March – The UK has not entered the third annual Eurovision Song Contest, after coming 7th previous year. It is the second of the only two occasions in the contest's history that the UK fails to enter. 1 April – BBC Radiophonic Workshop created. 2 April – Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 9 is premiered in London by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent. 10 April – Singer Cleo Laine and bandleader John Dankworth marry. 19 April – The Marquee Club first opens in London, as a jazz venue. July – Pete Seeger begins performing his new song "The Bells of Rhymney", based on a lyric by Welsh poet Idris Davies. c. 12 July – The Quarrymen (Paul McCartney, John Lennon (lead vocals), George Harrison, Colin Hanton (drums) and John Lowe (piano)) record a single 78 rpm shellac acetate disc at Phillips' Sound Recording Services in Liverpool: "In Spite of All the Danger" (McCartney–Harrison) and a cover of Buddy Holly's "That'll Be the Day". 28 August – Anton Bruckner's Symphony No 4 is performed at the Proms, the first complete Bruckner symphony to be played at the festival since 1903. 29 August – "Move It", the debut record by Cliff Richard and the Drifters, is released on the Columbia label, reaching number 2 on the UK Singles Chart. It is credited with being one of the first authentic rock and roll songs produced outside the United States. 2–9 December – Decca makes the first complete recording of Peter Grimes, conducted by the composer Benjamin Britten.
Charts
See UK No.1 Hits of 1958
Classical music: new works
William Alwyn – Fanfare for a Joyful Occasion, for orchestra
Malcolm Arnold – Sinfonietta No. 2, for orchestra, Op. 65
Lennox Berkeley
Concerto, for piano and double string orchestra, Op. 46
Poems of W.H. Auden (5), for soprano or tenor and piano, Op. 53
Ronald Binge – "The Watermill" Arthur Bliss – The Lady of Shallott (ballet) Cornelius Cardew – Piano Sonata No. 3 Daniel Jones – The Country Beyond the Stars (cantata) Peter Maxwell Davies – Prolation, for orchestra Peter Racine Fricker - A Vision of Judgement (chorus and orchestra) Thea Musgrave – String Quartet Edmund Rubbra – Violin Concerto Ian Parrott – Concerto for English horn (cor anglais) and orchestra Humphrey Searle - Symphony No 2 Michael Tippett - Symphony No 2 William Walton - Partita for orchestra Ralph Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 9 Grace Williams – Six Poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins for contralto and string sextet
Opera
Benjamin Britten – Noye's Fludde
Humphrey Searle – The Diary of a Madman
Film and Incidental music
Richard Addinsell – A Tale of Two Cities, starring Dirk Bogarde and Dorothy Tutin. John Addison – I Was Monty's Double. William Alwyn – A Night to Remember directed by Roy Ward Baker. Malcolm Arnold – Dunkirk, starring John Mills, Richard Attenborough and Bernard Lee. James Bernard – Dracula directed by Terence Fisher, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Buxton Orr – Corridors of Blood, starring Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee. Leonard Salzedo – The Revenge of Frankenstein directed by Terence Fisher, starring Peter Cushing.
Musical theatre
Expresso Bongo, book by Wolf Mankowitz and Julian More, with music by David Heneker and Monty Norman Valmouth, by Sandy Wilson, based on the novel by Ronald Firbank