It does feel like this concert should have been one week earlier, in time for Halloween. Post-October 31, the spookiness doesn’t quite chime, but nonetheless, Ensemble Q gave us a Sunday afternoon concert full of surprising (and surprisingly silly) sounds.

They began with Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre, a piece that I think you’re pretty much contractually obligated to have at any Halloween concerts. What made this interesting, though, is that it was in an arrangement by American cellist Cicely Parnas for violin and cello. It’s super virtuosic (as you’d expect from squeezing the orchestral original right down to two players), and violinist Adam Chalabi and cellist Trish Dean gave this a rip-roaring performance.

The short Poltergeist rag from 1971 by American composer William Bolcom followed. Bolcom had a long-standing voice-and-piano duo with his wife, Joan Morris, and their repertoire tended towards the early 20th century – think show tunes, cabaret, and so on. All of that colour and pizzazz is reflected in Bolcom’s own music, and so this goofy little piece has all sorts of jokes and surprises. At one point there’s a long viola solo … punctuated by a firm stomp on a bike horn. All played (and stomped) exquisitely well,...