Jānis Mediņš was a prominent Latvian composer whose piano works blend late Romantic sensibilities with Baltic folk-inspired melancholy. The piece is notable for its sincere, introspective melody and harmonic color.
The main challenge is achieving a seamless transition between the vocal-like melody and the warm, harmonic background.
Comparable difficulty and character — good candidates for what to learn next.
Ballade is rated Henle level 5 of 9 — late intermediate repertoire, roughly ABRSM grades 6–7. In the RCM system it corresponds to about level 7.
You should be comfortable at Henle level 5 — meaning you can already play level 4–5 pieces cleanly. Learning it one level early is possible as a stretch piece, but more than that usually leads to months of frustration.
A typical performance of Ballade lasts about 4 minutes.
Ballade is available as free public-domain sheet music on IMSLP — the score is linked directly from this page.
Pieces at a comparable difficulty and character include Intermezzo in A major, No. 2 by Johannes Brahms, Albumblatt by Max Reger, Ballad Without Words by Kurt Atterberg — see the full similar-pieces list on this page.