Stand alone Hyper-V Server is meant to be remotely managed, just as VMware's ESXi is. The local console has quite a lot of (potential) functionality but it is based on Windows Server 2008 Core (to some degree at least - Microsoft are quite adamant that this is not a "Windows" OS) and much of the local functionality is either disabled or not installed by default because of the focus on remote\centralised management (via SCVMM,RSAT etc). That focus makes sense - systems like Hyper-V Server are intended for use in environments where everything is remotely managed, it's highly unlikely that you will be seriously running these headless Hypervisors in an environment where you don't have a suitable system where you can install the remote management tools.
That said it is possible to enable PowerShell locally on Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 and with that you get the ability to do most of what I think you want to do. You will probably need to install additional components in order to extend the standard functionality and allow you to create and manage VM's, manage storage and virtual networking. There are probably other ways to do this too as all of the functionality you are looking for is available programatically via WMI.
So to answer your question, no a remote machine is not required but you will have to jump through some hoops.