Louis Ehlert's Ballade is a concise, song-like composition that favors melodic beauty over technical complexity. Its charm lies in its elegant phrase structure and simple, affective harmonies.
Achieving a warm, singing tone that can project over the pedal-heavy textures is the main challenge.
Comparable difficulty and character — good candidates for what to learn next.
Ballade (Op.34) 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 (Op.34) lasts about 4 minutes.
Ballade (Op.34) 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 Ballade by Louis Ehlert, Ave Maria in A (1860) by Camille Saint-Saëns, Ballade and Meditatie by Jef Tinel — see the full similar-pieces list on this page.