Conductor Paul Polivnick had a good run as music director of the Alabama Symphony in the late 1980s, and even appeared to be making a stab at raising the orchestra from a little-known regional band to a big-budget ensemble that could have broken into the second tier of American orchestras. But when the ASO went bankrupt in 1993, the dream of bigger things for Birmingham’s symphony died, and Polivnick moved on. Now, with the ASO back in business (it reincorporated in 1997) and in need of a new music director, Polivnick is back in town to guest conduct his old musicians, and there is much speculation that he and the orchestra would like very much to pick up where they left off more than a decade ago.