Russian-American conductor Semyon Bychkov was supposed to be conducting Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony last week with the New York Philharmonic. Instead he got the flu—presumably as a warning to all those New Yorkers who haven’t listened to their mothers about getting a flu shot—and his concerts were taken over by Joshua Gersen.

Gersen is the assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, here making his subscription-series debut at Lincoln Center. And he did a fine job—crisp and energetic, with all the enthusiasm you’d expect from a thirty-year-old conductor standing in front of a hundred-and-seventy-five-year-old orchestra.