The piece was commissioned by violist Walter Küssner, a colleague of Brett Dean at the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, as part of a CD project of works for solo viola in 1998/99. Since then, the composer himself has played it countless times in concerts and lectures. Now it is available in a congenial adaptation for cello. The title Intimate Decisions comes from a painting by Dean's wife, the Australian painter Heather Betts, and implies the private nature of the music. According to Dean, 'writing a work for a single string instrument [was] strangely akin to writing a personal letter or having an intense discussion with a close friend'. The piece opens with a short series of single intervals, all very distant in character, followed by a more assertive minor sixth - minor ninth motif and later by a chain of oscillating harmonics scating across the lower strings. The various developing characters evolve further through an increasingly determined and ultimately dramatic 'conversation', alternating between something rhapsodic and flighty virtuosity, but also calmness and tenderness, to fade away like an echo at the end.