A late Romantic era barcarolle written with the characteristic rocking motion associated with Venetian gondoliers. The piece is distinguished by its rolling left-hand broken chords and expressive melodic contours.
The main difficulty is achieving a smooth, continuous flow in the left-hand triplets without blurring the harmonies.
Comparable difficulty and character — good candidates for what to learn next.
Barcarola is rated Henle level 4 of 9 — intermediate repertoire, roughly ABRSM grades 5–6. In the RCM system it corresponds to about level 6.
You should be comfortable at Henle level 4 — meaning you can already play level 3–4 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 Barcarola lasts about 4 minutes.
Barcarola 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 Berceuse by Gabriel Fauré, Ave Maria (The Bells of Rome) by Franz Liszt, Ave Maria (Die Glocken von Rom) by Franz Liszt — see the full similar-pieces list on this page.