Against the strenuous objections of his friends, Mussorgsky undertook a tour of southern Russia in the summer and early autumn of 1879 as an accompanist for the 50-year-old soprano Darya Leonova. His friends found the work demeaning for the composer of Boris Godunov and they all feared that he would relapse into alcoholism or something worse. As his former composition teacher Balakirev said, "Suppose blood pours out of him?"

As it turns out, Mussorgsky enjoyed himself immensely, and the only thing that poured out of him was music. A portion of each night's program was given over to Mussorgsky as a soloist; during this time he would improvise piano fantasies based on his operas. Towards the end of the tour he even performed a work entitled Storm on the Black Sea which was said to be a brilliant evocation of that natural phenomena. Unfortunately, neither piece was written down and not even sketches remain.

More unfortunately, the two works which were written down, both of which bear the title On the Southern Shore of the Crimea, are feeble salon pieces enlivened only by the Crimean folk song-based central section. The first piece, bearing the subtitle "Gkhurzuf by Ayu-Dag" (Yurzuf), is slow and vague; the second bears the subtitle "Baydarki Capriccio" (a 'baydarki' is a Crimean canoe) and is faster and more vivacious. Neither is characteristic of its composer and neither is up to the level of the best of the pre-Pictures at an Exhibition piano works of his youth.

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