THE idea of building a new Bournemouth concert hall seemed to arise out of the blue during a radio interview about classical music.

But it seems the prospect, floated by Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s principal conductor Kirill Karabits, was already being taken seriously.

Mr Karabits raised the subject during a recent interview for BBC Radio 3’s Music Matters.

He told how he had taken the leader of Bournemouth council, Cllr John Beesley, to a performance at the new concert hall in Bilbao, Spain.

“The cost of the concert hall was 100million euros, but the impact that this hall made on the area was 100m euros each year – so I very much hope that there will be ways in Bournemouth to go to a new level of cooperating with the city,” he said.

Questioned by presenter Petroc Trelawny about whether he wanted to build a new concert hall, Mr Karabits said: “That's very much a dream at the moment.

“I see a lot of potential in Bournemouth and, as we know, there was a concert hall which was demolished, the famous Winter Gardens where the orchestra have performed for many, many years.

“Since then the city promised they would build a new concert hall for the orchestra so one day I hope it will happen.”

When asked whether he might stay in Bournemouth for 20 years, like some conductors of earlier generations, he said he might well, if he were given the right challenges.

“One of the challenges I think could be a new concert hall in Bournemouth, for example. I think if I would see a possibility for such a change I would like to invest even more time in doing that,” he added.

In these straitened times, you might imagine that decision-makers would dismiss the idea as unaffordable.

A previous Bournemouth council demolished the Winter Gardens, while the current one allowed the Pier Theatre to be closed and turned into an indoor climbing centre.

The prevailing wisdom in both cases was that the town had too many seats in entertainment venues.

Yet Cllr Beesley was upbeat about Mr Karabits’s suggestion, saying the conductor was “absolutely right” about what had happened in Bilbao.

Cllr Beesley paid his own way to join the trip to Bilbao and to Lucerne in Switzerland, which also had a new concert hall.

“The economic generation that both venues have created for those parts of Spain and Switzerland have been phenomenal – out of a substantial investment, but the added value it’s given to the local economy has been huge,” he said.

“They showed us quite a lot of evidence around that. Both venues are concert halls to be extremely proud of in their own cities.”

He pointed out that Bilbao is about the same size as the Bournemouth-Poole-Christchurch conurbation, while greater Lucerne is about the same size as Bournemouth.

Cllr Beesley said that all on the trip had agreed that a new concert hall would be “highly desirable”.

It could not be a major burden on the public purse, he said, but it was possible that the government or its agencies could join forces with the private sector to deliver it.

“I’m certainly open to any thinking about how we might look at that for the longer term,” he added.

There seems to be no prospect of the BSO quitting Poole, where it has been based since 1979, and whose council is one of several which supports it with grant funding.

Orchestra managers say any new venue would have to be complementary to the BSO’s commitment to Poole’s Lighthouse.

But almost a decade after the bulldozers moved in at the Winter Gardens, there may be some appetite to discuss concert halls once again.

See our Winter Gallery through the years gallery here.