24 hours in pictures, 21 July 2025
Through the lens: The Citizen's Picture Editors select the best news photographs from South Africa and around the world.
Team South Africa competes in the preliminary round of the team technical artistic swimming event during the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore on July 21, 2025. (Photo by FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT / AFP)
Umthambeka section residents barricade Joe Slovo Street at Tembisa in Ekhuruleni, 21 July 2025, with rocks over fixed electricity tariffs. Picture: Nigel Sibanda/ The Citizen People fly kites in Progreso, Mexico, 20 July 2025. The sky was filled with kites during the third annual festival of kites, many over 15 meters long. Picture: EPA/LORENZO HERNANDEZ Tiffany Meek appear at Roodepoort Magistrate's Court for bail hearing in the murder case of her son Jayden-Lee Meek (11), on July 21, 2025 in Roodepoort, South Africa. It is reported that Jayden-Lee Meek (11) was found dead, half-naked with multiple bruises on his body outside his home in Fleurhof on 14 May. (Photo by Gallo Images/Fani Mahuntsi) A person performs a bicycle stunt during the Red Bull Pura Calle (Red Bull Pure Street) event held to celebrate World BMX Freestyle Day, in San Jose, Costa Rica, 20 July 2025. Picture: EPA/JEFFREY ARGUEDAS Several bathers, some carrying surfboards, walk along the shore at La Concha beach in San Sebastian, Spain, 21 July 2025. Picture: EPA/JUAN HERRERO Riley Norton (captain) of the Junior Springboks with the trophy during the South Africa U20 national men's team arrival and media conference at OR Tambo International Airport on July 21, 2025 in Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo by Sydney Seshibedi/Gallo Images) Travelers at the departure hall at Schiphol Airport, The Netherlands, 21 July 2025. With the start of the nationwide summer holiday period in the Netherlands, the airport expects to handle 13 million travelers by the end of August. Picture: EPA/DINGENA MOL US singer Jennifer Lopez (C) performs during a concert as part of her 'Up All Night Live Tour' at the MVM Dome in Budapest, Hungary, 20 July 2025 (issued 21 July 2025). Picture: EPA/PETER LAKATOS People attend the Florida Supercon 2025 event at the Miami Beach Convention Center, in Miami Beach, Florida, USA, 20 July 2024. Florida Supercon 2025 is an event for fans of comic books, anime, video games, sci-fi, and general pop culture. Picture: EPA/CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH Dead fish is seen at West Beach as South Australia's experiencing algal bloom crisis, Adelaide, Australia, 21 July 2025. A toxic algal bloom has been affecting South Australia's coastline, severely impacting marine wildlife and causing discolored water, foam, and multiple fish deaths. Picture: EPA/MATT TURNER Ukrainian rescuers hide themselves in a shelter during an air-raid alarm, near the site of a drone strike on a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, 21 July 2025, amid the Russian invasion. At least two people died and 15 people were injured after Russian forces launched an overnight large-scale combined attack with at least 24 missiles and 426 drones across Ukraine, the State Emergency Service (SES) of Ukraine reported. Picture: EPA/SERGEY DOLZHENKO Aircraft of the Colombian Aerospace Force (FAC) participate in the Independence Day parade in Bogota, Colombia, 20 July 2025. Colombia declared its independence from Spanish rule on 20 July 1810, beginning the country's emancipation process. Picture: EPA/CARLOS ORTEGA (L-R) The Royal Family of Belgium, Princess Eleonore, Prince Gabriel, Queen Mathilde, King Philippe, Princess Elisabeth, and Prince Emmanuel, descend the stairs of St. Michael & St. Gudula Cathedral after the Te Deum Mass celebrating Belgium's National Day in Brussels, Belgium, 21 July 2025. Picture: EPA/OLIVIER MATTHYS
PICTURES: Swimmers brave winter cold for polar dip at Ebotse
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The Citizen
2 hours ago
- The Citizen
24 hours in pictures, 22 July 2025
24 hours in pictures, 22 July 2025 Through the lens: The Citizen's Picture Editors select the best news photographs from South Africa and around the world. Details of Sarah Niles' attire upon her arrival at Marvel Studios 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' world premiere at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, CA, USA, 21 July 2025. Picture: EPA/ALLISON DINNER Tourists watch the sunset at the Uyuni salt flat, in Uyuni, Bolivia, 21 July 2025. The Uyuni salt flat is the largest in the world with an extension of more than 10,000 square kilometers and holds large reserves of lithium. Picture: EPA/Esteban Biba The peleton in action during the 16th stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 171.5km from Montpellier to Mont Ventoux, France, 22 July 2025. Picture: EPA/CHRISTOPHE PETIT TESSON Rescue workers retrieve a submerged car from a flooded stream as onlookers gather during heavy monsoon rains in Islamabad, Pakistan, 21 July 2025. At least 216 people, including 101 children and 40 women, have died in rain-related incidents across Pakistan since 26 June as a new monsoon spell is starting up, authorities from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said. Picture: EPA/SOHAIL SHAHZAD Dennis Manyisa warms himself at a fire, 22 July 2025, after being evicted from the Wolwespruit informal settlement, in the East of Pretoria. The evictions took place on 13 July and some members of the community are now living alongside Solomon Mahlangu Drive while they wait to be relocated. Picture: Michel Bega/The Citizen Firefighters work to extinguish a blaze that broke out at a recycling facility in Mytilene, Lesbos island, Greece, 22 July 2025. The fire burned large quantities of recyclable materials, making the efforts of the firefighting crews particularly difficult. Picture: EPA/ELIAS MARCOU Kawaria, or Lord Shiva devotees, carry Lord Shiva statues on their shoulders in New Delhi, India, 22 July 2025. Every year, thousands of Shiva devotees collect holy water called ganga jal from the Ganges. During the month of Shravan in July, they trek barefoot or by other means, carrying the water over their shoulders to various Shiva temples in Delhi and neighboring states. Picture: EPA/RAJAT GUPTA People play in the surf near the remains of a dead humpback whale on Sao Conrado beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 21 July 2025. According to biologists and fishermen, the remains are a calf that may have been separated from its mother during the migration as dozens of humpback whales pass along the Brazilian coast. Picture: EPA/ANDRE COELHO African elephant calf Kaja in its enclosure at the Opel Zoo in Kronberg, Germany, 22 July 2025. Kaja was born on 27 May 2025. Picture: EPA/RONALD WITTEK Belgian F-16 fighter planes fly by as the Royal Family of Belgium attends the National Day Parade in Brussels, Belgium, 21 July 2025. Belgium marks its National Day on 21 July, commemorating the swearing-in of the first king of the Belgians, Leopold I, in 1831. Picture: EPA/OLIVIER MATTHYS MORE PICTURES: Swimmers brave winter cold for polar dip at Ebotse
Daily Maverick
5 hours ago
- Daily Maverick
The thrill of a live classical music performance is here to stay
Why still hear classical music live? What can a concert by your local orchestra offer, when there are more than 100 years of unsurpassable recordings available to listeners? No less a towering giant than Glenn Gould considered live performances outdated and artistically inappropriate. He gave his last concert in 1964, and spent the next 20 years in recording studios, changing the way people listened to piano music. No local musician could recreate what masters like this produced in studio conditions, so why go to hear them play those same pieces? It was something I wondered myself as I trudged through Parktown, on the icy first night of the Johannesburg Philharmonic's Winter Symphony Season, to hear Grieg's Piano Concerto. When I open my Idagio app, I can find 40 different recordings of the same piece within a few seconds, from Dinu Lipatti's poetic, intimate account with the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1947, to Leif Ove Andsnes's 2003 epic drama with the Berlin Philharmonic, which reaches a technical refinement that not even machines could reproduce. What could a concertgoer hope to get out of a Joburg performance in 2025, with so much freshness and bravura available at their fingertips? One resounding answer arrived in the person of Aleksandra Świgut, a 33-year-old Polish pianist with an enthralling stage presence. She showed up to play the Grieg looking like a conventional concert pianist, though what emerged from her playing was something quite unique. She opened the concerto with the solid force that Grieg's A-minor chords demand (and that JPO listeners have come to expect, in the wake of Olga Kern). But her strength turned out to be just one bright shade in a broader spectrum. Brawn gave way to a smooth elegance in the main theme, and eventually to a tender sensuousness in the romantic second theme. In between, there were so many sharp switches in touch, tone, timbre and articulation – like hairpin bends turning from one colour of the rainbow to the next – navigated with a thrilling virtuosic energy. Call her a chameleon in combat boots. What was perhaps an even rarer achievement was her total musical and dramatic integration with the ensemble. Many Romantic concertos are performed either as a contest between piano and orchestra, or to extol a shining hero among the duller masses. Świgut carried off the impressive interpretive achievement of taking up a lead role while honouring a larger structure. Could it match the precision or intensity of the Grieg recordings on offer? It hardly matters, because it was unique, a performance that could not be replaced by any other. Here was an artist who brought both thought and passion to her work, and it crackled with energy as it came to life before an audience's rapt ears. The soloist who appeared the following week – Andrey Gugnin (38), Russian – was no less dazzling in his technique, but his standout moment came after he had played his programmed work. Rachmaninoff's First Piano Concerto is often heard in the shadow of his titanic Second and Third Concertos, but it glitters with something not found in its successors, a wonderful weirdness and youthful tension, where you can almost hear the composer forming his own voice in real time. Gugnin discharged it with a poised athleticism, and then returned amid loud applause to play an encore, which turned out to be one of the highlights of an entire musical year. His encore, Rachmaninoff's G-major Prelude, emerged with a tender intimacy that drew the entire hall inward. The melody unfolded tremulously, as if Gugnin himself didn't know what the next note might be. His right hand was light, with its notes shimmering over the Steinway's strings like sunlight on water, and his left hand gently and elegantly grounded the Prelude's lyricism. A quiet radiance emanated from the stage throughout the hall, and the moment felt suspended out of time. For two and a half minutes, its tenuous enchantment brought present listeners closer to the deep heart's core. Recordings by even better pianists could not do that. Some regular concertgoers may groan to see Beethoven on the programme. His symphonies are both intellectually and emotionally vibrant (they're classics for a reason), but are treated by many musicians with either a reverence or a torpor that deadens their spirit. Conrad van Alphen clearly is not one of those musicians. The South African-born conductor, who led the third week of the season, has forged a successful career in Europe; listening to his guest appearances at the JPO, it's not difficult to see why. His Pastoral Symphony (Beethoven's Sixth, in F major) blasted away all thoughts of cold fronts, winter winds and Joburg's general June jitters. The first movement, which Beethoven titled 'Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside', was light and lucent. The first violins sailed through their melodies like a swallow soaring in springtime, and when the winds and French horns joined them the sound beamed from the stage with very cheerful feelings indeed. In fact, a lot of Van Alphen's direction was marked by an irresistibly strong forward momentum and upward lift; or, put more bluntly, it was remarkably bright, loud and fast. Not in a roughshod way, but with long, flowing lines, and a warmer and more luminous energy than this reviewer has ever heard in the Pastoral Symphony. The third movement, a 'Merry gathering of country folk', was a vivacious dance, and many listeners in the audience seemed to be bopping their heads along to the music. Van Alphen didn't rush mindlessly through it, but steered the orchestra effortlessly through shifts in tempo and volume to evoke a vibrant, three-dimensional setting. The thunderstorm of the fourth movement was a rip-roaring force of nature, and when the sun came out again in the final movement, it was with a luster that sun-loving South Africans could wholeheartedly embrace. As the orchestra breezed through the last few minutes of the shepherd's grateful song, there seemed to be radiance arising and filling the hall. For now, it seems that the JPO and its audiences will still have to do with only one concert per week, which can seem scant to many when they find that performances are sold out long in advance. No Wednesday-night concerts are scheduled for next month's Early Spring Season either. But a gratifying appendage to the Winter Season was the JPO's accompaniment of Joburg Ballet's stunning production of Swan Lake, which opened at the Joburg Theatre and will soon travel to the Cape Town International Convention Centre. Unsurprisingly, the orchestra dazzled the audience on the night I attended. Note mistakes aside, they played with a sharp, snappy energy that kept the drama humming from each moment to the next, and a sprightly, buoyant sound that seemed to lift the dancers onstage. Particularly noteworthy is Johan Ferreira, the principal oboist, who had to carry the famous theme many times throughout the performance, as well as the concertmaster Miro Chakaryan and principal cellist Susan Mouton, who accompanied Siegfried and Odette in their moving pas de deux. I also especially enjoyed trumpeter Donald Bower's jovial solo in the Neapolitan Dance. The conductor, Eddie Clayton, welcomed a resounding applause for the players in the pit at the end of the show, securing the irreplaceable sense of joyful communion and spontaneous energy that brings a packed theatre together. Recordings have their beauty, but the thrill of a live performance is certainly here to stay. DM
The South African
a day ago
- The South African
SA women's water polo side avoid wooden spoon at Aquatics Championships
Another international tournament, another forgetful series of results the South Africa's men's and women's water polo sides. Playing at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, the South African women's side were drawn in Group D alongside Spain, Great Britain and France. In their opening match, the South African side lost 23-4 (score by quarters: 9-1, 5-0, 4-2, 5-1) to Spain. That was followed by a 12-3 defeat against Great Britain (score by quarters: 5-0, 2-2, 4-1, 1-0) and a 13-6 loss to France (score by quarters: 4-1, 3-2, 3-3, 3-0). South Africa finished bottom of the group, scoring just 13 goals while conceding 48. The South African women's side then entered the 13th-16th place bracket where they lost 16-6 against Croatia. They then enjoyed their only success of the tournament in beating Singapore 8-4 (score by quarters: 3-0, 2-3, 2-1, 1-0) in the battle to avoid the wooden spoon. All-told, the South African women's side played five matches, lost four, won one, scored 27 goals and conceded 68 for an average loss of 14-5. Meanwhile, the South African men's side were drawn in Group A alongside Italy, Serbia and Romania. In their opening match, South Africa lost 27-3 (score by quarters: 8-0, 6-3, 4-0, 9-0) to Serbia. They followed that up with a 24-5 loss against Romania (score by quarters: 8-0, 3-1, 7-3, 6-1). In their final group stage match, the South African men's side were humbled 28-4 by Italy (score by quarters: 6-1, 9-0, 8-1, 5-2). South Africa finished bottom of the group, scoring just 12 goals while conceding 79. The South African men's side then entered the 13th-16th place bracket where they were outclassed 27-4 (score by quarters: 5-1, 10-1, 9-2, 3-0) by Australia. That defeat saw them contest the 15th-16th place playoff where they fell short 14-13 (score by quarters: 7-2, 3-4, 3-3, 1-4) against hosts Singapore. All-told, the South African men's side played five matches, lost all five, scored 29 goals and conceded 120 for an average loss of 24-6. Hopefully Minister of Sport Gayton McKenzie has a plan up his sleeve to turn around South Africa's water polo fortunes in time for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1 Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.
