Politicians do mock interviews all the time to prepare. Everyone else expecting to be interviewed should as well. If you put some effort into it you can think up 98% of the questions you might be asked - the only question is what order they will ask and how much detail they want. So you practice someone asking those questions and you responding - sometimes they will ask clarifying questions, sometimes not, but again you know the topic and you have rehearsed everything you want to say. In the end for a 10 minute interview you should have 2 hours worth of answers rehearsed. Not memorized, but rehearsed. You should change the exact words you use, but the ideas you are trying to say are already in your mind and so easy to do.

Remember too that you can redirect questions. They might never ask about your best friend as a kid, but you have rehearsed the story of something you did and that story can be used as an example for 20 different questions. While telling that story you don't really need to think about it so instead you get that entire time to figure out the conclusion where you tie the story back to the question.

Being interviewed is a skill. You can practice it.

You've got it exactly right, and the same technique works well for giving presentations.

Run through your slides in front of your rubber duck, as if they're the audience.

You want to program your brain to work like a soundboard - for topic X, say "Y". I find it helps me greatly to have these prebaked responses ready to go, and I get to choose when I'm talking whether I adlib entirely or just repeat the same script i trained.

Often even during the talk there would be times I'd feel out of it, distracted, or something else. Then you just do rote script until your brain recovers and you can be fully "on" again.

Finally, people LOVE hearing stories. So the more stories you can work into your answers or your presentation, people will stay engaged. This is a common thread from watching many very competent presenters at cons

Yes and: I would expect a show's producers and editors to fix those pauses.

It was live. But I would've expected that they had a conversation discussing possible topics / questions beforehand (large and established radio station with over 2 million listeners). These awkward pauses would've been spotted then already. Maybe they had, and he was more relaxed and eloquent there, or maybe his schedule didn't allow for a pre-interview meeting.

Even if there wasn't time, he should have practiced interviews before and so been comfortable even if the exact topic is new.

He should always be prepared to talk about his first interest in music. His first time touching a piano. Why he choose piano (which may have been his parents forcing it at first). What other instruments he plays. What is favorite music is. Details about whatever piece is performing now (maybe spoilers on what he is practicing but not yet performing). Ideally he should listen to modern music so he can connect to kids by talking about something popular today (maybe even play a piano arrangement of it).

Those are the basics that he should have an easy time talking about. If he unexpectedly wins an award he didn't expect to be in competition for he might be speechless, but for the above the answers should be easy.

...if he wants to be good at giving interviews. He can also be happy being a pianist who isn't good at giving interviews.

But then he shouldn't have granted an interview in the first place. He should also expect that because he isn't self promoting like that he is soon passed over for piano playing positions (despite how good he may otherwise be) and has to find a non-playing job (teaching is common). His current job requires him to be good at interviews. If he wants to keep this job he needs to get good at it fast - it may already be too late.

Now if he decides giving interviews isn't what he wants to do and thus switching to a different job where he doesn't have to give interviews (and also will not play publicly much) is the right choice I will not fault him for that. It is his choice and his alone.

> His current job requires him to be good at interviews

I see. I had no idea that was a requirement of being a professional pianist. This all read as incredibly pointless with me thinking that interviews were a side thing for a pianist.

Many people fail to understand thair true job. the real job in cases like this is to promote the show. That means interviews or other activities. Talent playing is a requirement of course, but there is plenty of talent around.

> the real job in cases like this is to promote the show

What, the piano show he performs? Why would that be the pianist's job? Wouldn't that be the venue's responsibility?

Edit: I had to look him up. Quote Wikipedia:

> Igor Levit is a Russian-German pianist who focuses on the works of Bach, Beethoven, and Liszt. He is also a professor at the Musikhochschule Hannover.

So it's not like he's taking gigs in dive bars. Do renowned classical musicians typically shoulder the burden of promoting their own performances... through radio interviews?

Interview might be live. But yes, ideally producer would have caught this before a live interview.

The key thing here is reflection. You can look at your speech again and ask: am I more anxious about saying something I don’t like, or about this? I also was a slow-speaker, which in my case was actually anxious-speaker. But at some point I said “f… it” cause no one really cares deeply about the perfect form of a fine structure of your message. Literally anything is better than your awkward stumbling.

Be wrong and say stupid things. You will be corrected or correct yourself. Accept the correction and move on. If you feel very wrong, turn it into a question? Instead of feeding back to anxiety you’ll feed back to speech.