This work is a late-Romantic Italian character piece reflecting the style of Marco Anzoletti's violin-centric compositional approach. It is distinctive for its sweeping melodic lines and dark, dense harmonic language.
The primary challenge is balancing the dense polyphonic textures while maintaining a singing tone in the upper voice.
Comparable difficulty and character — good candidates for what to learn next.
Ballata No.2 in B-flat minor is rated Henle level 7 of 9 — late advanced repertoire, roughly ABRSM grade 8 and above.
You should be comfortable at Henle level 7 — meaning you can already play level 6–7 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 Ballata No.2 in B-flat minor lasts about 6 minutes.
Ballata No.2 in B-flat minor 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 Ballata No.1 in G minor by Marco Anzoletti, Ballata No.4 in D minor by Marco Anzoletti, Cammino Funebre No.1 in B-flat minor by Marco Anzoletti — see the full similar-pieces list on this page.