This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1951.
Specific locations
1951 in British music
1951 in Norwegian music
Specific genres
1951 in country music
1951 in jazz
Events
January 29 – Nilla Pizzi wins the first annual Sanremo Music Festival with "Grazie dei fiori". February 22 – The first complete performance of Charles Ives's Symphony No. 2, written between 1897 and 1902, is given in Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein. March 3-5 – Jackie Brenston "and His Delta Cats" (actually Ike Turner's Kings of Rhythm) record "Rocket 88" at Sam Phillips' Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, a candidate for the first rock and roll record (released in April). March 5 – The Suk Trio, consisting of Josef Suk (violinist), Jiří Hubička (pianist) and Saša Večtomov (cellist), make their debut, at the Rudolfinum Hall in Prague (Czechoslovakia). April 4 – Frankie Laine, newly signed by Columbia Records, becoming the highest paid vocalist of his day, immediately justifies his new contract by recording the double-sided megahit "Jezebel"/"Rose, Rose, I Love You", the latter being the only major popular music chart hit in the United States written by a Chinese composer (Chen Gexin). April 18 – An article entitled "The Fight Against Formalism in Art and Literature, for a Progressive German Culture" appears in the Tägliche Rundschau, official daily of the Soviet Government in Germany, promulgating the new cultural policy of the DDR. May 9–26 – The Queen Elisabeth Competition for violin is held (for the first time under that name) in Brussels, Belgium. Leonid Kogan is awarded first prize. June 9 – Joseph Haydn's opera L'anima del filosofo, better known by its alternative title Orfeo ed Euridice and written in 1791–92, is given its world premiere at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. June 14 – Bill Haley and His Saddlemen record their version of "Rocket 88", combining the rhythm and blues arrangement of the version recorded in early March by Jackie Brentson with country music trappings. June 22 – July 10 – Darmstädter Internationale Ferienkurse held in Darmstadt. July 2–14 – The seventh annual Cheltenham Music Festival is held in Cheltenham, England, with a performance of Brian Easdale's opera The Sleeping Children, premieres of the first symphonies of Malcolm Arnold, John Gardner and Arnold van Wyk, Franz Reizenstein's Serenade for Winds and Maurice Jacobson's Symphonic Suite, as well as performances of works by Humphrey Searle, Robert Masters, Benjamin Frankel and Philip Sainton. July 11 – Disc jockey and music promoter Alan Freed broadcasts his first Rhythm and blues radio programme from station WJW in Cleveland, Ohio. Freed uses the term rock and roll to describe R&B, in an effort to introduce the music to a broader white audience. July 14–21 – The Haslemere Music Festival, consisting of six concerts of early music, takes place in Haslemere, England. July 29 – The annual Bayreuth Festival resumes for the first time since the Second World War, now under the general direction of Wieland Wagner, with an opening concert of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, followed by productions of Der Ring des Nibelungen, Parsifal and Die Meistersinger. August – The annual Salzburg Festival takes place in Salzburg, Austria, featuring four opera productions from the Vienna State Opera: Mozart's Idomeneo and Die Zauberflöte and Verdi's Otello, all conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Berg's Wozzeck, conducted by Karl Böhm, as well as seven orchestral concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic (two conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler and one each by Edwin Fischer, Rafael Kubelík, Eugen Jochum, Karl Böhm, and Leopold Stokowski), six choral concerts, four chamber-music concerts, three solo recitals, and a number of smaller events. September 5 – Opening of the month-long Berlin Festival of the Arts, with a performance in the New Schillertheater of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. Subsequent musical events include performances of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Consul, Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera and the first German performance of Oklahoma!. September 11 – The Rake's Progress, an opera by Igor Stravinsky with libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, premieres in Venice, conducted by the composer. September 17–22 – The fourth annual Swansea Festival of Music and the Arts opens in Swansea, Wales, with a controversial speech by one of Wales's leading composers, Daniel Jones. The festival is the final component in the Festival of Britain and consists of seven programmes, featuring Welsh composer Arwel Hughes's new oratorio St.