Last year Roman Jablonski asked me to write a piece for him and a pianist Krystyna Borucinska. I decided to write a considerably short piece in one movement, some sort of a Fantasiestück of about 8-9 minutes in length. I worked on the piece for a whole Winter of 85-86 and finally the score of Moon Flowers was completed on January 28, 1986 at 11:39 a.m. (New York time). And how surprised I was to find, immediately after, that at this very moment the space shuttle ''Challenger'' was blown up in the sky. Therefore I devoted Moon Flowers to the memory of the seven late astronauts. The piece can be divided into a few sections. The opening section starts with a characteristic Largo-theme played by cello. This section develops instantly into a more lyrical fragment played by cello and piano, which leads to the second section of the piece Vivo, con anima. From its beginning this part grows in complexity, tempo, dynamics and volume of sound and gradually moves from the lower register to the highest sounds in both instruments. This marks the climax of the piece, which suddenly is blown up by the soft, whispering sounds of cello which announce the recapitulation of Largo-theme from the beginning. The Largo section with its broad melancholy is fading out gradually and dies away almost to silence. The inspiration for this work came from the paintings of Odilon Redon, French symbolist artist (1849-1916), who created a fantasy world of strange flowers, mysterious men in the moon, mythological beings, where the lyricism coincides with the deepest sadness and tragedy and where one is struck by an indefinable and haunting air of unreality. This visionary, dream-like quality of his art fascinated me so much that I made the title of my piece after one of his paintings.' [Marta Ptaszynska]