Wild Cello: 14 New Celtic Tunes for Beginner Cellists

About this piece

Wild Cello is a book of 14 original Celtic-inspired pieces for cello and piano by the British cellist and composer Joanna Borrett. Kevin Mayhew published it on 25 April 2025 for 'beginner cellists of all ages'. In a Strad Playing Hub article, Borrett says the tunes 'build gradually from Grades 1-3'. The book grew out of a holiday on the Isle of Mull, and she wrote it to 'help empower them to create their own music and experiment with specialist effects right away'. Most pieces are modal and minor-inflected folk melodies, with a few special effects. 'Tribe' opens with accented open-string double stops, 'Rocking' is played entirely in natural harmonics in one position, 'Travelling by Wolf Light' has the cellist tap the instrument, and 'Rumbustious' is played col legno. 'Improvise' is a teacher–pupil duet in which the pupil improvises in G major to the rhythm of 'Twinkle, Twinkle', and 'Howl' can be played solo, with piano, or as a cello duet. Several pieces carry dedications: 'For Ellie Morris', 'For Catherine Black', 'For Fergus Black' and 'For Hugh Davies'. Borrett, a former ABRSM examiner, has written that she taught herself to play by ear and improvise in her fifties. The book includes full piano accompaniments and free downloadable backing tracks. Kevin Mayhew has posted recordings of 13 of the pieces on YouTube, and the complete piano score can be viewed on the British Music Collection.

Technical overview

Tribe, Hush, Travelling by Wolf Light, Rocking, Improvise, Rumbustious, Lorn, Revelry, Untamed, Enrapt, Howl, The Rebel, Valour and Unbroken, about 17–18 minutes in all, each piece about 1–2 minutes. Most of the writing is in first position on all four strings. It adds open-string double stops, pizzicato chords, left-hand pizzicato, col legno, natural harmonics and tapping the cello. Phrases use slurs of 2–4 notes, dotted rhythms, rubato ('rubato ad lib.' in Howl) and consecutive down-bow retakes. The last pieces (Valour, Unbroken) climb across all four strings and shift out of first position, reaching fourth position.

Technical focus

• Double Stops
• Harmonics
• Pizzicato
• Bow Retakes
• Legato
• 2 Note Slurs
• 3 Note Slurs
• 4 Note Slurs
• Dotted Rhythms
• Dynamics
• Hairpin Dynamics
• Rubato
• Shifting
• String Crossings
• Ensemble Skills
• C String Notes
• G String Notes
• D String Notes
• A String Notes