The piece was commissioned by a friend of Brett Deans of the Berliner Philharmoniker, the violist Walter Küssner, as part of a CD project with works for solo viola in 1998/99. Since then, the composer himself has played it himself countless times in concerts and lectures. Here it is now in a congenial adaptation for cello. The title Intimate Decisions comes from a painting by Dean's wife, the Australian painter Heather Betts, and indicates the private nature of the music. According to Dean, "writing a piece for a solo string instrument was strangely similar to writing a personal letter or an intense conversation with a close friend." The piece begins with a short series of individual intervals of a rather intangible character, followed by a more emphatic motif of a minor sixth and a minor ninth, later a chain of harmonies whirring along the lower strings. The various developing characters go through an increasingly decisive, ultimately dramatic "conversation", in rhapsodic alternation with flighty virtuosity, but also calm and delicacy, only to fade away like an echo at the end.