Charles Grelinger was a prolific composer of salon music in the early 20th century. This piece is a sentimental character work that highlights typical late-Romantic harmonic sweetness.
At Henle 3 this is a late-beginner piece — comfortable hands-together playing is assumed, and musical shaping starts to matter. The main demands: a true singing tone, with the melody floating above the accompaniment; rubato that must breathe naturally without losing the pulse; and precise articulation — the difference between crisp and blurred is the piece.
Beyond that, expect chord voicing — bringing out one note inside a handful of others.
Focus on maintaining a vocal quality in the melody while keeping the accompanying figures transparent and light.
Comparable difficulty and character — good candidates for what to learn next.
A level or two down with the same spirit — ideal if this piece is still out of reach.
Where this piece's skills lead: slightly harder works making similar technical demands.
Curieuse histoire (Op.206) is rated Henle level 3 of 9 — late beginner repertoire, roughly ABRSM grades 4–5. In the RCM system it corresponds to about level 4.
You should be comfortable at Henle level 3 — meaning you can already play level 2–3 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 Curieuse histoire (Op.206) lasts about 3 minutes.
Curieuse histoire (Op.206) 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 Blumengruss by Carl Bohm, Barcarole by August Enna, Como é bom sonhar by Alfredo Gama — see the full similar-pieces list on this page.